 
FALCON BOY

A Fairly Hopeless Hero

BOOK ONE

Falcon Boy

A Fairly Hopeless Hero

Book One

Barnaby Taylor

For Iris, as per usual and always ...

First published 2014 as Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird versus Dr. Don't Know in a Battle for all the Life of all the Planets

Republished as Falcon Boy in 2018

Copyright  Barnaby Taylor 2014

Copyright  Barnaby Taylor 2018

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

ISBN 978-1-9996332-7-1 (eBook)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Barnaby Taylor

www.falconboy.ie
Table of Contents

1. Welcome to the Queue

2. Dr. Don't Know meets Juniper Jarvis

3. HeroVerse ™

4. Bacharach McCarthy

5. The Cowardly Jumpy Nolan

6. Falcon Boy is slightly too grand

7. The Early Days

8. www.worldsworstsuperheroes.com

9. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Infamous Moon Rope

10. Ellis is an ordinary girl

11. The Rebel Robot MCs

12. 'Love is Like a Scary Wind'

13. Is It Really Talent Time Again?

14. SpiDer HiDer

15. Falcon Boy looked slightly rubbish?

16. A New Beginning?

17. Pearly Stockwell and the Interesting Twins

18. 'You really are our only help'

19. What a coincidence!

20. The reader is perplexed as well

21. Hairy Top Lips and Homemade Boots

22. Introducing Erica 'Neck Brace' Larkin

23. And Grimdulf Rides a Giant Talking Lion

24. It goes without saying...

25. World Savers Wanted™

26. The Building Channel

27. A Whiff of Hot Oil

28. The Disappearance of Dr. Workaday Trimfit

29. More Dubious Narrative Liberties are Taken

30. Option Number One

31. Option Number Two

32. Option Number Three

33. Option Number Four

34. Loving You Loving Us

35. Pop Watch

36. Dr. Don't Know's Submarine

37. 'Other Transmissions'

38. Everyone Loves a Robot

39. Troublebots are Always Trouble

40. Troublebots Three

41. Here is the Plan

42. When Toyshops Attack

43. Everything Seems Too Much

44. Uncertainty is an Uncertain Thing

45. 'What do you want me to say?'

46. 'What are you doing, Mr. Frog?'

47. 'Do you want another one?

48. 'Where is 'here'?'

49. Falcon Boy's 'extraordinary things'

50. Bewilder Bird Suits his Name Superbly

51. '... falling into apocryphal disarray'

52. I Really Love the Rebel Robot MCs

53. Loving Us, Loving You (again)

54. 'We are Panic Town's favourite superheroes'

55. Lady Sago Hargreaves

56. Ellis Gets Everyone's Attention

57. Ellis Says What to Do

58. Ready for Anything?

59. Pearly Breaks a Leg

60. The Trapped Unicorn

61. The End of All Things Ever

62. On With the Sadness

63. Someone Else Begins to Cry

64. Back From the Dead

65. Trouble for the Troublebot

66. Donny Goes Missing

67. Donny Starts Talking Proper

68. Is Donny Really Donny?

69. Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

70. The Needs of the Many

71. Ellis Gets Things Going Again

72. What a Show!

73. Here's That Man Himself

1. Welcome to the Queue

You are too late. Nothing works anymore. The world has gone wrong. The planet still spins in space but forlornly now, sullen, lopsided; different somehow.

Everything is broken.

Buildings. Streets. Trains. Aeroplanes. Elevators. Bicycles. Radios. Washing machines. Traffic lights. Percolators. Skylines. Exit lights. Frying pans. Pavements. Alarm clocks. Egg timers. Boats. Chandeliers. Lawnmowers. Aquariums. Fax machines. Easter eggs. Personal organizers. Microwaves. Trumpets. Newspapers. Riding schools. Candelabras. Curling tongs. Football boots.

Headphones. Shoe laces. Tin foil. Fountain pens. Picture frames. Step ladders. Garden furniture. Swimming pools. Beach huts. Kettles. Handkerchiefs. Record players.

Jigsaw puzzles. Waste paper baskets. Oven gloves. Paint brushes. Perfume bottles. Standard lamps. Printing presses. Immersion heaters. Car boot sales. Drum sticks. Room dividers. Stair rods.

Journals. Diaries. Dictionaries. Letters. Cards for all occasions. Notes. Novels. Plays. Scripts. Emails. Submissions.

Hobbies. Habits. Fads. Fashions.

Movements. Waves. Histories. Cultures.

Desires. Ambitions. Ideas.

Questions?

Everything.

All the whole world does now is queue. Whole countries united in their queuing. Continents. The whole world. As far as the eye can see. Visible from space.

No one can remember a time before the Queue. Only the Queue. Now. And nothing else. Forever.

But no one cares. All they care about is the Queue. There is nothing else to care about. Only the Queue.

What a way to live your life. Being born. Growing up. Dying. All in the Queue. A life defined by waiting in line. Life after life after life. One after the other. Everyone in the Queue.

Forever. All you will ever know. Nothing more. Only the Queue.

The world is really rubbish now. Really rubbish.

Really, really rubbish.

So what has gone wrong?

Dr. Don't Know is what has gone wrong.

Dr. Don't Know?

The world's greatest super villain.

The world's last super villain.

Last?

Well, he won, didn't he? His evil plan succeeded. And now the world looks the way he has always wanted it to.

His evil plan? You had better come with me.

2. Dr. Don't Know meets Juniper Jarvis

Like almost all of some parts of the rest of the world, Panic Town had the choice of nearly twenty-seven television channels. Yet for most people, 123 Celebrity News was the only channel of choice.

123 Celebrity News was beamed, bounced, screened, recorded, streamed, downloaded, torrented, zipped, compressed, shared, copied, replayed, burnt, backed-up, archived, data-managed and saved for later all day every day so that Panic Town could gorge itself on celebrity news until it falls into an audiovisual stupor.

The breaking news this morning was coming live from the steps of the Town Hall and was a celebrity feast like no other has ever been witnessed. It was guaranteed to revitalize even the most constipated of viewers.

'Hi everyone, my name is Juniper Jarvis and I'm reporting live for 123 Celebrity News. I'm with that well-known bad guy and all-round celebrity super villain, the legendary Dr. Don't Know.'

For most people in Panic Town, the concept of twenty-four-hour news meant exactly what it said. They imagined that presenters like Juniper had to present the news for twenty-four hours at a time.

As a result, these same people were permanently perplexed when they bumped into Juniper while they were walking down the street. Or shopping at a supermarket she had been invited to open. Entered a talent contest she was judging. Or looking in through the front window of her ground floor apartment as they just happened to be walking past.

'Why aren't you reporting the news?' people asked when they saw her.

'Shouldn't you be on the television instead of standing in this queue?' people would say, as Juniper patiently queued to pay her television license at the Panic Town National Bank.

'Who's going to give me the latest celebrity gossip while you're busy treating yourself to a week's groceries?' inquired the cashier in Food and Things, Panic Town's most successful supermarket superstore.

Some of the same people also thought that whenever they met Juniper out and about, that she was reporting live for some reason or other, and so they were somehow part of the story. Even the obvious absence of cameras and other news-reporting equipment didn't stop people believing this.

'They can build a camera so small nowadays that it is only visible to house flies, microscopes and scientists.'

'Juniper's left eye is a camera lens and whenever she talks to anyone, she is simultaneously transmitting live footage to the watching world.'

'Juniper has a microphone embedded in her index finger and this gives her the real edge when it comes to news reporting.'

'Juniper's feet are actually the metal feet of a tripod that were grafted onto her body whilst she was on a so-called 'holiday'.

'Juniper has gills inserted into her neck so that she can do interviews in monsoons, waterfalls or underwater.'

As you can imagine, it was hard work being Juniper Jarvis but she would never let this get in the way of doing her job.

'The breaking news this morning is that Dr. Don't Know has kidnapped Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird, and is holding them both prisoner in an undisclosed location.'

Juniper paused briefly to let the impact of her news sink in.

'Even despite the cataclysmic severity of the situation, and bearing in mind any possible calamity now facing the entire Solar System, Dr. Don't Know has kindly agreed to take time out of his busy schedule to be interviewed.'

Whether working with international master criminals, small children underachieving in some delightful way, celebrity ponies and other quirky mammals in the public eye, film stars – the obviously famous and their not so obviously-famous counterparts – even the occasional over-achieving citizen, they all got the same balanced approach from Juniper.

'So, Dr. Don't Know, perhaps you could tell our viewers why you have decided to commit such an act?'

In case you hadn't heard, are new to this type of thing, or are simply flicking through the channels looking for something to watch while the adverts are on, Dr. Don't Know is an internationally-known career criminal, reportedly responsible for more than three-quarters of all the crimes that have taken in and around Panic Town over the last fifteen years.

Dr. Don't Know is also the world's leading authority on being nondescript. The trick to being such a successful international criminal mastermind is to be absolutely and completely one hundred and fifty-six per cent nondescript.

In fact, Dr. Don't Know is so completely nondescript that my description of him will run out of words right about now.

'Don't know,' says Dr. Don't Know.

These are the only words that anyone has ever heard Dr. Don't Know use and so, unsurprisingly, this is the name he has been given by the press. Why are these the only words that anyone has ever heard Dr. Don't Know use? I don't know. You would have to ask him, but you don't have to be a genius to guess what the answer would be.

Dr. Don't Know's name will be of the utmost importance to all of us a little bit later on. However, for now, all you need to know is how frustrating it is when the only answer that someone gives to a question is 'Don't know.' Try it now with someone you know and see how it feels. When you have finished come back to the story. We'll be waiting.

'Ok. Thank you for that,' continued Juniper. 'Perhaps you could tell our audience why what you are planning to do is so criminally important, that you have to keep our two favourite heroes prisoner somewhere secret.'

'Don't know,' said Dr. Don't Know.

I imagine you are starting to feel as frustrated as everyone else is with the interview so far. Dr. Don't Know hasn't told us anything we want to know. And isn't likely to. We are no nearer to knowing anything. Or knowing anything more than nothing. Or simply knowing nothing.

Juniper held the microphone even closer to the Doctor.

'Is all this necessary because you are close to committing some wickedly evil crime and need the world's most intrepid twosome out of the way in case they try to deflect your diabolic aim?'

'Don't know,' said the inscrutable super villain once again, and even though I know you are probably extremely upset by now with the whole lack-of-information thing, I can only give you my word that you will know more of what you need to know a little later on.

'So, there you have it, folks. You heard it first on 123 Celebrity News. My name is Juniper Jarvis and I will see you all the next time you see me.'

3. HeroVerse ™

You are probably wondering who Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird are and how they got to be everyone's favourite superheroes. Let me explain.

None of us are ever who we think we want to be, and Clayton Candlegrease was no exception. Clayton lived alone and spent all day stirring gherkins in the world-famous Sours Pickle factory. The smell of vinegar followed him wherever he went.

Clayton had recently moved to a new town and didn't know a single soul. Living in a town where you don't know anyone is a very strange experience. It is the simplest things that feel the strangest.

For example, when you buy a newspaper and a pint of milk at your local corner shop, you strike up a conversation with the person behind the counter but when they are not really friendly, you misinterpret their obvious dislike of their job as an obvious dislike of you.

It was a lonely life and with nothing to do and no one to do nothing with, Clayton quickly reached the boundaries of his solitary existence. This was when he discovered HeroVerse™.

Halfway through a busy shift, Clayton overheard two of his colleagues talking about a new online experience where you pretended to be a superhero and lived a startlingly exciting, albeit virtual, life pretending to fight imaginary crime. That night Clayton logged on.

The HeroVerse™ slogan confidently states:

'YOU ARE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE.'

This sounded good enough to Clayton and he enrolled straight away. With the simple filling of a form, Clayton Candlegrease became Falcon Boy.

'I swoop like a noble bird of prey and will sweep away crime wherever I find it,' he typed. 'I am majestic, and magnificent,' he hurriedly continued as the HeroVerse™ Induction film played. 'I am big and strong and hardly ever wrong,' he concluded gleefully.

The opportunity to say wonderful things about yourself is an intoxicating one, and Clayton discovered that the crushing anonymity he so detested in his real life became profoundly liberating in his new, virtual one.

In the real world, it is very sad and frustrating to think that nobody knows anything about you and your life. In the world of HeroVerse™, nobody knowing anything is what makes the experience such a liberating one. If no one knows anything about you then you can say anything you want about yourself and no one is any the wiser.

With this in mind, Clayton took every opportunity he could to say something good about himself. Yet, whenever he found an occasion to heap praise upon himself, Clayton found that he always typed too fast in the heat of the moment and his spelling would go awry.

For example, he never realized that the description of his avatar, visible to the whole world of HeroVerse™ described Falcon Boy as being 'cepable ot fihting crim and ritting werongs.'

As part of the registration process, you also invent your own superhero catchphrase. Clayton dutifully completed this section but could never understand why 'I'm good, me! Let me help and fight and save you!' didn't inspire the kind of confidence he felt sure it should have done.
4. Bacharach McCarthy

Bacharach McCarthy also lived a lonely life. He was tall and athletic-looking, capable of lifting heavy things, and took a keen interest in how the world worked but none of these attributes ever made a real difference to his adult life.

Bacharach left school and went to work for a small manufacturing company that produced the world-famous Universal Drain Righter©. This handy-sounding device is a small twist of metal that you attach to any antipodean plughole to re-right the direction that the water swirls as you empty a bath.

For eight hours a day and six hours of overtime on Saturday, Bacharach McCarthy placed a piece of metal into a groove, pressed a large red button and then laid the now twisted metal onto a conveyor belt for packing.

In all this time, he spoke to no one. And no one spoke to him. But when the shifts were over, Bacharach raced home, wolfed down a pot of noodles, logged onto HeroVerse™ and turned once more into Bewilder Bird.

Online, Bacharach felt completely free and was able to express himself in ways that he couldn't in reality. He could behave in any way that he wanted to, but still he chose to be as silent in HeroVerse™ as he was in real life. He just preferred it this way.

The HeroVerse™ community was an active one and new members were quickly met and gret by more established denizens. There was the usual list of rules covering such things as player interactions, acceptable behaviour and other ethical guidelines. These rules would be similar to any that you might encounter in any other online communal space. But the one thing that makes HeroVerse™ so different from any other online superhero communities is that special powers had recently been outlawed.

In the original iteration of HeroVerse™, members were given full access to an unlimited range of superpowers, and as you can imagine it wasn't long before everyone you met could:

fly,

bend time to their will,

cause impossibly heavy objects to float like feathers,

shoot bright green lasers from their eyes,

feel no shame,

breathe underwater,

talk to animals,

think big,

walk through walls,

control thunderstorms,

unite warring insects and cause them to fight for them,

understand the true meaning of things simply by touching them,

survive extreme drops in temperature,

compartmentalize,

blend into any kind of scenery,

dupe people with a supernatural sleight of hand,

be visually and vectorally versatile,

breathe in a vacuum,

correlate,

hover hawk-like,

cause the molecules of their body to become gaseous,

hop really high,

invert algorithms,

disregard emotional stimuli,

shoot sheets of flame from a wooden pole,

discover the poetry evident in everyday objects,

swordfight with a custom-made walking stick,

reanimate corpses,

make their skin as hard as steel,

speak the language of electrical circuits,

adopt the abandoned,

repel,

wrestle the unruly,

self-propagate at an alarming rate,

lie to both themselves and others,

self-edit the past,

shake their head to stop things happening,

predict the future (but those that chose this superpower never saw what was coming, coming),

raise the temperature of things with their breath,

change colour at will,

out-process the fastest microprocessor,

argue at great length,

make great strides,

write long lists,

inhale aeroplanes and helicopters,

force people to dance uncontrollably,

wonder aloud,

forge documents convincingly,

never die,

motivate defeated soldiers,

magnetically attract,

run incredibly fast,

animate the inanimate,

memorize extremely long combinations of numbers,

exaggerate to co(s)mic effect,

plan accordingly,

know things worth knowing,

stop speeding vehicles dead in their tracks with the flat of their hand,

de-fraud,

desire the undesirable,

have the fastest wheelchair in the universe,

spit a long way,

imitate,

seize the day,

echo,

stare at the Sun,

mimic,

use their finger as a USB key,

pay no mind to things,

run incredibly far,

short-circuit,

do a speedy whirl,

expertly ventriloquize,

touch the sky,

create a whirlwind with a flick of their wrist,

become a machine,

or a centaur,

see the good in everyone,

stretch themselves incredibly thin,

dominate whole nations through sheer force of will,

stand very still for very long,

completely disregard local sensations,

act unbidden but wholly appropriately,

transmute and alchemize,

proffer expert advice when required,

and summarize long lists like this one.

All of this was simply amazing and marvelous in the beginning and HeroVerse™ was inundated with riotous superhero activity twenty-four hours a day. But it wasn't long before things began to get a bit same-y.

What's so super about being a superhero if you are only as super as every other superhero?

If you can fly and I can fly and he can fly and she can fly and they can fly, then what's so great about flying anyway?

Indeed, what's so great about anything anyway when everyone else can do something else equally as impressive?

Gradually, members of HeroVerse™ began to disregard their chosen superpowers, renouncing their ability to walk upside down on ceilings or see things from a fly's eye's perspective, choosing instead to simply log on, meet with friends and talk about their day and other normal things. Eventually the owners of HeroVerse™ succumbed to community pressure and removed the superpower creation function altogether.

Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird joined just as this was happening but didn't realize anything had changed until they began to discover large groups of vividly-designed avatars of all shapes and sizes standing around, talking about their busy days at work.

'So how did you get on today?' said a giant mechanized monster to a radioactive merman.

'Snowed under, as always,' replied the merman. 'I really must find some time for a holiday.'

'I know what you mean,' said the mechanized monster, 'but where to go is the question.'

'Too true, too true,' said a gaseous cloud as it passed by. 'I hear the beaches are simply packed at this time of year.'

'Where's all the action?' thought Falcon Boy to himself. 'Why is no one doing anything?'

But people were doing things, plenty of things, just not the sort of things Clayton had imagined people would be doing.

'I'm having some people over at the weekend,' said an ugly-looking alien to an ancient-looking god with a cloak made of crow feathers, 'but two of them are vegan and three others are lactose-intolerant.' The alien scratched its three heads. 'Planning the menu is a nightmare.'

'You poor thing,' said the god. 'Have you thought about getting a take-away?'

'I have,' replied the alien, 'but what about the MSG?'

The ancient-looking god nodded. 'You're right and in any case, you'll all be hungry half an hour after you have eaten.'

'Make sure you have plenty of salad,' said a passing lizard. 'That is sure to keep everyone happy.' The lizard flicked its very long tongue. 'That would work for me.'

The gathered superheroes turned to Falcon Boy. 'What would you suggest?'

'Who cares?' replied Falcon Boy. 'I joined HeroVerse™ to forget about the ordinary world, not to go on and on about it.'

'Humppff!' humppffed the alien. 'You're no help.'

Bewilder Bird had exactly the same experience as Falcon Boy, only his was slightly different because Bewilder Bird chose not to speak to anyone. Instead he just listened. And he couldn't believe his ears either.

Once Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird realized that there were no superhero things to do in HeroVerse, they both decided to leave. But the whole creating a new identity thing was extremely intoxicating and Falcon Boy felt very reluctant to relinquish his newly-formed alter-ego.

'If I'm not allowed to swoop and sweep like a bird of prey online anymore,' Falcon Boy wondered, 'then what about I try to swoop and sweep in real life?' The idea seemed like a good one and the more he thought about it, the more it felt something like his destiny.

'There has to be more to life than stirring pickles,' thought Clayton. 'I can't be stinking of vinegar until the day I die.'

And of course, he was right. There is more to life than stirring pickles unless, of course, stirring pickles is all you have ever wanted to do with your life. In that case, well done to you and I hope you get the chance to keep stirring. The same goes for stinking of vinegar.

And so the idea was fixed. Clayton handed in his notice the next day and tried to ignore the sniggering of his supervisor when he explained why it was that he no longer wanted to work in the factory.

'You'll be back begging for this job in a couple of weeks,' the supervisor sneered. 'Fools like you always are!'

'Not this fool,' thought Clayton, but he held his tongue as it seemed like the right superhero-type thing to do.

That night, Falcon Boy posted the following message on the superhero community notice board:

TIRED of talking? Want ACTION? Mail me NOW!

Logging on the next morning, Clayton was delighted to find a reply. The reply had no content and didn't actually say anything but Falcon Boy could see that it came from someone called Bewilder Bird. It was a fairly torturous process to make arrangements with someone who didn't speak, but finally arrangements were successfully made for the two heroes to meet in real life and embark upon their life of superheroing together.

5. The Cowardly Jumpy Nolan

Stun Ramsford worked as a gardener for the Panic Town Parks and Gardens Department for forty-seven years, before finally being convinced to retire following a campaign initiated by the Panic Town Gazetteer.

Gardening was Stun's life and even though he was no longer employed by the town, he still turned up at the Panic Town Park and Ornamental Gardens each day, weeding the flower beds and pushing his own wheelbarrow up and down the paths.

'No one knows the weeds like I do,' he told the Gazetteer. 'When the time comes, I want to be buried in the compost heap along with the fruit peel, sandwich boxes and grass cuttings.'

One day in July, a gang of out-of-town toughs headed down to the Panic Town Park and Ornamental Gardens, looking to wreak some horticultural havoc.

Have you ever wondered what to call a gang of toughs? A pack? A group? A gaggle? A fist? What about a trouble of toughs? Anyway, the leader of this gang-pack-group-gaggle-fist-trouble of toughs was a repulsive, odious-looking fellow called Jumpy Nolan.

Jumpy was very tall with hunched, round shoulders. He wore baggy children's clothes and had a face like a ventriloquist's dummy that had been dropped from a great height. Jumpy also had a very foul temper that he reserved for the young, the elderly, the inanimate and anyone or anything else that he thought he could be tough with and get away with it.

Jumpy started his afternoon's horticultural havoc by ripping plants out of the newly weeded flowerbeds and hurling them into the duck pond. Easily impressed, his friends saw what fun their leader was having and eagerly joined in.

Before long an entire bed of gently-bobbing purple verbenas were unceremoniously ripped from their bed, and now floated sadly on the surface of the pond. Just then Stun came around the corner pushing his barrow.

Stunned, Stun stopped and stared. In all his years in the park, Stun had never seen such bad behaviour and he told the toughs so.

'In all my years in the park, I have never seen such bad behaviour,' he told the trouble of toughs. The toughs stopped and turned to face the ageing gardener.

'What has it got to do with you?' Jumpy snarled. 'Why don't you pick up your barrow and go and wheel it down the middle of a busy motorway? Or stuff it handle-first up your nosy, nasty nose?'

Jumpy's friends all said 'Yeah!' together and this made Jumpy feel like a really tough tough for acting so tough with his trouble of toughs standing totally tough behind him. Stun, standing his ground, stuck to his guns.

'Get out of my park this instant,' he demanded. 'I won't be having you doing any more damage.'

'Oh, won't you?' whined Jumpy in a sneery voice. Or sneered in a whiny voice. Whichever one you choose, Jumpy is still an obnoxious bully. If you don't like either, you can just say that Jumpy whined or Jumpy sneered.

'Well, what about this then, eh?' growled Jumpy as he grabbed an ornamental cabbage, tugged it clean from the ground and threw the startled plant at the startled gardener.

Stun stood still and was stabbed by the stalk. Jumpy and his friends grabbed more cabbages and began to advance on poor Stun. Stun stood his ground but stood no chance. The toughs were almost upon the gardener when they suddenly stopped and stared. Running towards them full-pelt were two men wearing strange-looking costumes.

The smaller of the two wore a bright blue beak-hat-mask held together with industrial tape, with a yellow t-shirt hanging untucked over a navy-blue boiler suit. The letters F and B were crudely potato-printed onto the t-shirt. Two curved silver feathers bordered the letters. Heavy-looking walking shoes completed this outfit. Even from this distance, everyone could see that the man had the makings of a moustache sprouting on his top lip.

The other man stumbled as he ran because his boots were made to look like a bird's feet. Unfortunately, the claws were too long and they kept getting caught beneath each other. He also sported a golden cloak that was tattered at the edges and beneath this the toughs could see a red shiny bodysuit with 'BB' badly-sewn onto a golden shield on his chest. A simple golden band covered his eyes.

'Jumping Jupiter,' shouted Falcon Boy, for that is who was wearing the yellow t-shirt, 'we'll have none of that nonsense round here.' The other hero didn't say anything. He just shook his fists. Falcon Boy kept on shouting as they raced to the rescue.

Straight away, you will be pleased to hear that Falcon Boy has rethought his catchphrase. Personally, I was very fond of 'I'm good, me! I can help and fight and save you!' I have even tried to incorporate it into my own life, with fairly varied results. However, I am sure you will agree that 'Jumping Jupiter' trips more readily off the tongue.

Falcon Boy continued.

'This here is my esteemed superhero friend and partner in derring-do, the mighty Bewilder Bird, and he will stand for none of this nonsense neither.'

Bewilder Bird shook his fist again to emphasize his complete unwillingness to stand for no nonsense of this nature.

Thinking that the going here was going to get pretty tough, pretty soon the trouble of toughs decided not to tough it out. Instead, like bullies everywhere, they decided to run away.

One can only hope that even as we speak, Jumpy is experiencing the sort of boring, depressing things that bullies deserve to experience. Sewing mail bags, for example. Digging deep dirty holes in the rotten rain. Watching a telephone that never rings. Getting no presents on his birthday. Not being sat next to on the bus. Or sipping cheap powdered soup from a chipped mug as he looks out through a dirty window, at a world that is having much more fun than he ever will.

6. Falcon Boy is slightly too grand

Stun stood still and started to stammer.

'I c-c-c-c-cannot thank you enough,' Stun stammered as the triumphant heroes stood in front of him and started to pose in various triumphant ways.

Bewilder Bird favoured the full body flex followed by a solitary bicep curl. Do this whilst bending one knee forward and it can make you look fairly heroic all right. Falcon Boy preferred something stiller and more classical. Something like the broken statues called David he remembered from books at school. With his right leg slightly forward and shoulders angled, Falcon Boy adopted the perfect contrapposto pose.

Stun stayed stunned.

'W-w-w-w-w who are you?' he stammered once more.

'I'm glad you should ask that, my timid stuttery little man,' said Falcon Boy, slightly too grandly. 'We are just ordinary people stung into action by the inaction of others and we have taken it upon ourselves to be doing extraordinary things'

Grammar was not really Falcon Boy's strong point. Unperturbed, they continue. 'My colleague and I recently made the decision to renounce our ordinary lives and start walking the earth looking for crimes to fight and wrongs to right.'

Falcon Boy pointed his chin towards the horizon.

'I am majestic and magnificent. I am Falcon Boy,' said Falcon Boy majestically and magnificently. He raised a clenched fist into the air.

'I swoop like a noble bird of prey and sweep away crime wherever I find it,' he declared. 'I strike fear into my foes and will remove all wrongdoing from the planet.' Falcon Boy pointed to his friend.

'This here is Bewilder Bird, so named for his ability to bewilder his opponents through a combination of silence, strength and alliteration.'

Stun stayed silent. Whether it was the adrenaline rush he was currently experiencing, the feeling of liberation that a triumph, however small, can induce in oneself, or the simple fact that something exciting had finally happened to him, Falcon Boy started to babble.

'Dissatisfied with what we both see as a chronic inability nowadays for society to do anything other than stand around chatting idly about small and pointless things we are both prepared to confidently predict that our collective input into the age-old struggle between good and evil will allow the world to eventually see a reasonable return on the effort we are investing and that this will be evidenced by an eventual upturn on the law and order axis of the world's crime graphs.'

Stun stayed stunned.

'My partner and I see this as a global project but one with local roots. Though we may be thinking big long term, we are prepared to focus short term on the here and now. Your funny little town could be any funny little town but it is the first funny little town we found when we got off the train.' Falcon Boy pointed at the elderly gardener, 'And you were the first funny little person we saw who we thought needed our intervention.'

Falcon Boy turned to Bewilder Bird, who had finally stopped curling his bicep. 'I think I like it here,' he declared to his friend. 'Let's stick around and see what the future might have in store for two likely-looking crime-fighting colleagues actively looking to engage with all manner of dangers and all for the public good.'

Bewilder Bird nodded silently as he always did.
7. The Early Days

In the early days, Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird rented a small apartment overlooking the bus station but the sound of early-morning engines being revved by angry-sounding drivers swearing at the hordes of seagulls quickly became too much for the superheroes.

After much pleading, plenty of form filling and a considerable amount of don't-you-know-who-we-are-ing, Panic Town District Council's Housing Department finally allocated them the derelict gatekeeper's cottage that sits on the very edge of the Panic Town Park and Ornamental Gardens.

With no renovation grants available to them, Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird spent the last of their savings decorating the house, and even though Bewilder Bird wasn't very good when it came to painting the skirting boards he was always handy when a curtain needed hanging.

To begin with, Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird were the subjects of considerable attention. If you found yourself patiently waiting at the end of the queue of well-wishers and autograph hunters lined up outside the recently-renovated cottage, you could reasonably expect to wait for almost twenty minutes before you got to the front.

The queues were only to begin with and as early as the Monday of the following week everything had returned to normal. Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird were able to go about their daily business unnoticed. This was obviously very good for their prospects of fighting crime unhindered, but not very good for either of their egos.

In the best tradition of small minds in small towns everywhere, Panic Town was soon acting as if Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird had always been there.

8. www.worldsworstsuperheroes.com

Although they had only actually managed to scare away a small trouble of toughs, and now found themselves at something of a crossroads in their career, Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird certainly weren't the worst superheroes in the world.

Indeed, the removal of the superpower option on HeroVerse™ caused many more virtual superheroes to acquire their own reality and the market rapidly flooded with people seeking to recreate their online profile in the real world.

This migration from the virtual to the real quickly became big business as a whole range of subsidiary activities sprang up to support this sudden deluge of superheroes falling from a hole in the cloud.

As you can imagine, this new production of superheroes rapidly became an industry like any other and soon generated its own ancillary activities, the most notable of which was the annual World's Worst Superhero Award as voted for by the readers, writers, listeners, downloaders, sharers, hackers, phishers, rippers and secret surveillancers of www.worldsworstsuperheroes.com.

Last year's winner of the World's Worst Superhero Award was the wonderfully named Oily Rag. Known as Cleary Onetime to his family and to the Tax Office, Oily Rag is a diminutive out-of-work mechanic intent on fighting crime whilst wearing an oil-smeared boiler suit and wielding a very heavy rusty spanner.

'Something needs to be done by someone to stop someone doing something to someone else,' he said confusingly to anyone who would listen. 'And that someone needing to do something will be me,' he announced when interviewed by his local newspaper.

Leaving for his first (and last) night's patrol, and shadowed by the local press, Oily Rag barely made out of his house before dropping the spanner on his sandaled toe.

Oily had reckoned on his first night's patrol being a gentle one that was more for show than anything else. It was also the middle of summer so Oily Rag chose not to wear his heavy steel-toed work boots.

In itself, an accident of this kind isn't really much of anything and many of us have probably also accidentally dropped things on our toes. The big difference here is that when we do something like this we don't have anyone filming it with their phone and uploading it for the whole world to see.

By the time the plaster cast had been removed from Oily Rag's foot, the footage of his accident had been viewed by more than 50 million people. Though this made Oily Rag instantly famous it wasn't in the kind of way he had in mind and so he retired.

The video guaranteed that Oily Rag would win the award but he refused to attend the ceremony, put his spanner back in his toolbox and disappeared from public view. You can imagine his disappointment. But Oily Rag wasn't the only person disappointed by the whole affair. Spare a thought for Gibson Rightspice, Oily Rag's next-door neighbour and one-time enterprising local entrepreneur.

Gibson spotted what he thought was a gap in the home improvement market and had two hundred and fifty-five thousand Oily Rag Official Boiler Suits™ quickly made in the hope of cashing in on the next big superhero thing.

Gibson was able to sell a handful of boiler suits to art school students and other young people who thought that they were being really clever by wearing an Oily Rag Official Boiler Suit™ to their local disco or supermarket, but irony was never intended to be part of Gibson's business plan. It was only a matter of weeks before Gibson had to swap his shop on the high street for a market stall.

Gibson now solely trades online and even though he does occasionally manage to shift a boiler suit, it is normally only for scrap or thrown in free with a job lot of used crockery.

With all things being equal, Panic Town could have done a far lot worse than ending up with Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird ready to fight crime for them.

9. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Infamous Moon Rope

Everyone knew that Dr. Don't Know had captured Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird and was holding them captive somewhere secret. It was all people could talk about. If you hadn't seen it on the television, heard about it on the radio or guessed it from the pages of the free newspapers that littered the streets and gathered around your ankles whenever the wind picked up, then you could pretty much guarantee that you would find out everything you needed to know just by walking down the street.

Mr. and Mrs. Leary Holdtight were standing at the bus stop after a morning in the Panic Town Shopping Centre when they were told by someone else in the queue – who has since requested anonymity – that Dr. Don't Know was planning to steal all the trees in the world and burn them in a giant pile, whilst roasting hot dogs on metal skewers made from real live barking dogs.

Old Mrs. Quigley, Panic Town's finest (and only) elderly lollipop lady, told three children from Panic Town Primary School that Dr. Don't Know was going to drain all the oceans everywhere with a giant sucking machine and then squirt the water wherever he wanted, 'most probably,' she told the wide-eyed innocents, 'at aeroplanes and on fairgrounds and carnivals.' They all gasped.

'Then there will be trouble,' Mrs. Quigley concluded knowledgeably, tapping her nose with her Stop sign. 'There will be more trouble than you could shake a large shakeable stick at.'

The three children were far too intimidated by the elderly lollipop lady to ask what would happen to all the fish.

Adzel Circumference was getting ready to go home after working a night shift on the Panic Town taxi rank when a final fare jumped in the back and asked to be taken to the station. The journey was a really short one but was still long enough for the passenger to tell Adzel that governments elsewhere were planning to encase Panic Town in a giant plastic dome.

'Not only will this contain the situation and prevent it from escalating,' said the passenger to the wide-eyed taxi driver, 'it will also allow them to fill the dome full of crowd control foam if they need to.'

Despite being exhausted after a hard night's driving, Adzel found it hard to sleep that morning.

Captain Lori Lorimer of the Panic Town Police Force briefed a panel of Panic Town's finest notables including, most notably, Councillor Denver Footswerve, the current Mayor. As she nervously scrolled through the slides of her presentation, Captain Lorimer told the noted notables that she had her best minds working on the case.

'I have my best people working on this one,' she tried to reassure those gathered. 'A crack unit, comprised of the finest minds mined from the department.' She paused, hoping that the pause sounded reassuring.

'I don't mind telling you,' Captain Lorimer continued, 'that to my mind these minds are some of the finest minds that anyone has ever been minded to assemble.'

She changed the slide of her presentation and aimed her laser pointer at the screen.

'Our early intelligence is very sketchy but from what we can gather it is only a matter of days before Dr. Don't Know is ready to launch his Moon Rope.' Captain Lorimer paused again.

On the screen was an artist's impression of what the mythical Moon Rope might look like. The audience saw two circles representing the Earth and the Moon with a line joining them. Captain Lorimer traced the line with her laser pointer.

'From what my best minds can so far deduce, the Moon Rope will allow Dr. Don't Know to create an elaborate pulley system connecting the Earth to the Moon.'

'Why would anyone do anything like this?' asked Mayor Footswerve anxiously.

Captain Lorimer shuffled her notes nervously.

'We are not sure why, your Honour,' she told the Mayor, 'but all our agents are telling us that their best intelligence is telling them that this is not going to be a good thing.'

Gasps echoed around the room as Captain Lorimer concluded her presentation by predicting that the Moon Rope would likely cause untold electrical disruption. It would also prevent anyone on the entire planet from ever knowing the right time ever again.

'I'm afraid it doesn't look good at the moment,' she told her gasping audience. 'This Moon Rope could well mean the end of the world for all of us.'

Mayor Denver Footswerve cleared his throat before he spoke. He thought this made him sound more mayoral.

'I think I speak for all of us here when I say how pleased we are to have your best minds working on our behalf, Captain Lorimer.' The Mayor paused and I am beginning to wonder whether pausing is as contagious a social habit as yawning.

'Ladies and gentlemen, I am aware that we are all aware of just precarious the situation sounds but I can't help wondering, from a Public Relations perspective, whether it will in any way be possible to temper bad news of this magnitude with some good news, no matter how small that good news might be?'

The Mayor looked at Captain Lorimer and she could see panic in his eyes. Being mayor was the only thing he had ever wanted and now it looked like someone was going to go and spoil it before he had the chance to enjoy it.

There was no good news.

'There was no good news,' Mayor Footswerve said later to his wife, Peculia, as he ate his tea. 'People are going to start blaming me if the world ends while I am in office.' Mayor Footswerve pushed the peas around his plate.

'They already blame me for everything already and I have only just been elected. I can't imagine how Panic Town will react if something cataclysmic and world-ending happens while I am Mayor.'

Peculia could find no words to comfort her troubled husband.

Meanwhile, in another kitchen in another house in another part of Panic Town, Captain Lorimer also sat and worried. She hadn't enjoyed breaking the news to the Mayor and she had seen how worried the news had made him. But what could she do? It was her job and she had to do it to the best of her ability.

It hadn't been easy for Lori Lorimer to rise up through the ranks of the Police Force to her current position. It had taken years of dedication and sacrifice and Lori had had to dispense with anything that threatened to complicate her career trajectory. After years of overlooking romantic possibilities and keeping her family commitments to the very minimum, Lori was now afraid that all those years of directing traffic, recovering stolen cats and cautioning small children, not to mention the hours and hours of revising for exam after exam after exam, would count for nothing when faced with such a global disaster.

'Then what will I do?' she asked herself. 'I can't just go back to patrolling the streets in uniform again, pounding the beat on the unforgiving streets, because if Dr. Don't Know gets his evil way, there will be no beat to pound and no streets to patrol nor any uniforms to put back on to patrol them with.'

There was no sleep for many people that night.

10. Ellis is an ordinary girl

Ellis likes to do ordinary things like riding her bike, dancing, eating pasta, watching television, dressing up, baking cakes, reading, Drawing, writing stories, pretending, asking questions and playing the piano.

She loves games of all kinds: board games, video games, fun games, silly games, invented games, games with dolls, with puppets, with bats and balls, with words, with mimes, music, silence, with guesses and riddles and made-up words.

But what does Ellis look like?

Is she tall with blonde hair? Freckles and a ponytail? A bob and a baseball cap? A big toothy grin? Shy in a velvet dress? Laughing as she is Dressed as a pirate? Bright blue eyes full of tears when a clap of thunder makes her scared?

I know what she looks like in my mind but my mind is different to your mind. What do you think she looks like? As Ellis will tell you herself, if you ever get the chance to ask her, the best parts of any story are the parts you add yourself.

You have the words that are written. You have the gaps between the words. Your job is to fill these gaps with your imagination.

For example, I have just told you who Ellis is. I have also told you what she likes doing. But I haven't told you what she looks like. That is your job.

Ellis also really enjoys listening to listen to music and stories on her generic MP3 player. Here is what she is currently listening to:

11. The Rebel Robot MCs

The Rebel Robot MCs are three young rappers, B-boys and DJs called Nuclear Boy, DJ Slo-Mo and R-Man. With rhymes as hot as

We're gonna ROCK, gonna BLOW our TOP

And for the likes of you WE'LL NEVER STOP

Gonna lay down the law for the HERE AND NOW

And your only care is WHO? not HOW?

We're not old enough to drive a car but

YOU need to know how REAL we ARE

and beats to match it is easy to see why the Rebel Robot MCs are Panic Town's favourite hip hop crew.

The Rebel Robot MCs hit the big time with their rebooted cover version of the old Amy and the Aminals (sic) soul stomper Party Line. Released on the very obscure White Crown record label in 1966, there were only 50 copies of the original single printed and a pristine copy is now worth enough to purchase a small house in the poshest part of Panic Town.

The video that accompanies the Rebel Robot MC's version really takes off just at the part where Nuclear Boy and R-Man rap the chorus with six dolls dressed as alligators while DJ Slo-Mo uses a wonky bicycle wheel as her turntable.

CH ... CH ...CH ... Check it out

Take your time

Call us NOW on the party line

We're here for YOU

And you're there for US

So check it out now

DON'T MAKE NO FUSS

I'm Nuclear Boy and I'm in the house

Hear my big town roar

Ain't no country mouse

DJ Slo-Mo is her NAME

She's here to STAY

She got everlasting FAME

R-Man says clap your hands

Don't bury your head deep in the SAND

Say R-Man,

What's your plan?

WHAT YOU GONNA SAY TO THE MAN?

Say R-Man

What's your plan?

WHAT YOU GONNA SAY TO THE BIG BAD MAN?

Within three hours of the track's release the fortunes of the three MCs changed forever when Party Line was adopted by the Fuzzy Cola™ Corporation as the soundtrack to their next television advertisement.

Some people were inevitably upset by what they saw as the usual selling-out by struggling artists who are given a glimpse of the big time, but others applauded the sentiment as DJ Slo-Mo memorably rapped a response to their critics on the band's follow-up track Party Line II (I'm Doing Extra Fine).

Not selling, we're reaching OUT,

And we're telling you WITHOUT A DOUBT,

Our aim is TRUE and our hands are CLEAN,

We don't get our kicks from NO DRINKS MACHINE,

They say we do, WE SAY WE DON'T,

THEY WANT US TO, BUT YOU KNOW WE WON'T

For many of their other fans, including Ellis and her classmates, any possible fears of whether or not an artist's creativity would be consumed by corporate conformity were largely ignored in favour of the cuddly robot costumes the Rebel Robot MCs wore in the next Fuzzy Cola© television advert once the corporation bought the rights to the band in perpetuity.

12. 'Love is Like a Scary Wind'

Mizzy Rosebud came second in the 'Best Amateur Song Recorded in a Bedroom on a Smart Phone or other Intelligent Hand-Held Device' category at last year's Annual Global Music Awards.

Love is Like a Scary Wind is variously described as 'ethereal', 'ghost-like', 'wraithful', 'haunting', 'mournful', 'vengeful', 'celestial', 'empyreal', 'unworldly', 'vapoury', 'impalpable', 'sublime', 'gaseous' – someone has clearly been reading a thesaurus here – 'exquisite', 'fairy', 'filmy', 'weird', 'weirdy', 'weirdly', 'bizarre', 'peculiar', 'flinchful', 'twitch-inducing', 'panic-mongering', 'cataclysmic', 'stultifying', 'impairing', 'unhinged', 'unlikeable', 'unbearable', 'unbelievable', 'unimaginable', 'inconceivable', 'unanswerable', 'unheimlich' and 'terrifying.'

Mizzy Rosebud repeats the song's title (and only lyric) over and over again for thirty-seven minutes in a small whispery lisp (or lispery whisp) as a howling wind howls in the background.

Love Is Like a Scary Wind has taken the Internet by storm. You can't move nowadays for footage of snakes yawning, kittens falling from sofas, penguins being tickled, small boats foundering in tropical storms, pensioners sleeping, crowds at railway stations or football matches, amoebas multiplying beneath the gaze of a microscope, fruit flies, or people kissing in old black and white films, all with Mizzy's song in the background

Love is Like a Scary Wind has also been adopted for more nefarious aims and only last week researchers based at the (very worryingly-sounding) Global Institute for Secret Internet Observance discovered an uploaded version of the song embedded on the website of a now bankrupt cosmetic surgery company.

The track was looping on a nineteen-day cycle and there were unconfirmed reports that it was interfering with the brain waves of anyone who had ever received a marketing email from the company. Fearing global contagion, the website was eventually made safe in a joint cyber-initiative spearheaded by the USA and Nepal.

It was recommended that all future plays of Love is Like a Scary Wind should be monitored on a country-by-country basis. However, a well-meaning parent of a child in Ellis's school felt that the issue of censorship was something for children to decide for themselves and allowed their child to distribute a download of the track among their classmates.

13. Is It Really Talent Time Again?

If you want something more upbeat, then Little Bernie Tiger could well be your boy. Little Bernie is the name that has been on everyone's lips since he won Is It Really Talent Time Again? recently.

In the early episodes, the viewing public were encouraged to laugh at unfortunate people who were induced, hoodwinked, tricked and bamboozled into revealing their natural lack of talent on a 'talent' show.

Eventually, this tawdry process begat six finalists and from then on the competition unfolded, with an act leaving each week until only two acts remained. And this is where the problems began.

It was during the live final that after weeks of manipulation, the viewing public finally snapped and refused to vote for their 'favourite' act.

The winner of this year's Is It Really Talent Time Again? was decided by the toss of a rather large novelty coin and following three fumbles, two miscalls and a power cut, Little Bernie Tiger pipped The Tumbling Tortoise Trio to the award.

Derk and Joddy Pepper are the brains behind The Tumbling Tortoise Trio, an act which sees Derk repeatedly tumbling three large tortoises down a children's garden slide to land in a gold-painted bucket while Joddy wears a glittery dress, points at the bucket and looks on admiringly.

If you log onto The Tumbling Tortoise Trio Official Homepage™, www.tumblingtortoisetrio.org, you will see that the husband and wife team describe themselves as 'Small Animal Holders, Intricate Spectacle Deliverers and Light Entertainment Exceptionalists'.

Sadly, appearing on television didn't boost the appeal of The Tumbling Tortoise Trio in any way at all, but if you are organizing a social event and the entertainment lets you down at the last minute then I'm sure The Tumbling Tortoise Trio would be available to fill in at the shortest of really short notices. And I mean short.

For Little Bernie on the other hand, his winning song, Everybody Look at Me, has catapulted him to the very edge of the celebrity troposphere. As the song begins:

Everybody Look at Me

I'm a Real Celebrity

I Know I'm only Eight but I'm really Great

So Everybody Look at Me

At lunchtime in every playground across the land, you can barely move for small children forming a line and clapping in time as they sing the chorus to Everybody Look at Me. It goes like this... (but you knew that already!!)

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

I'm Great, I'm Great, I'm Really, Really Great

I'm Eight, I'm Eight, I'm Really Only Eight

Then, if you have any energy left, you need to do a floor drop followed by a high five with yourself before launching into the now infamous Tiger Rap.

I said I'm only Eight but I'm really Great

You think I'm Crooked but I'm Really Straight

I Jump Up High and I Dance All Night

And Me and My Friends We Never Fight

We Go to Every Party and We Have a Great Time

But the Way You all Dance is a Proper Crime

You Need to Take a Good Look and Copy Me

Make my Shapes and I Will Set You Free

See Me Go, Just Watch Me Move

I'm the Easy Slider, I'm the Super-Groove

On Every Dance Floor Across the State

I'm a Real Celebrity and I'm only Eight

Everyone agrees that this isn't the last we have seen of Little Bernie Tiger.

14. SpiDer HiDer

SpiDer HiDer are two mysterious sisters who have no relatives, have never been seen in public and do all their business through their official website www.spiderhider.pop.

With the tyrannically troubling sound of a tinny toy keyboard breakbeat cranked up to way beyond 190 beats per minute, SpiDer HiDer use their songs as a platform to talk about the kind of things that trouble young children everywhere.

'No-one Can Hear Me' and 'Please Listen' received a reasonable number of downloads but it was 'Can't You Hear Me Shouting REALLY LOUD' that really captured the imagination of young children everywhere.

Angsty and angry in the kind of tantrumy way that children can easily understand, 'Can't You Hear Me Shouting REALLY LOUD' has now established itself as one of the genre's most enduring anthems. I'm pretty sure that by now most people will have heard it. Just in case you haven't and you are wondering what all the fuss is about the words go like this:

I think that you can't hear me

So I'm shouting REALLY LOUD

I don't want to have you near me

So I'm shouting REALLY LOUD

REALLY LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm shouting REALLY LOUD

REALLY LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm shouting REALLY LOUD

Can't you hear ME shouting?

REALLY LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

REALLY LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

REALLY LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

REALLY LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

REALLY LOUD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you can imagine, listening to SpiDer HiDer can be a disorienting experience. Whether full of daring or just plain unlucky, were you to sit through their entire first album without taking a suitable break between tracks then you would probably regret it.

This is not to say that the particular power of SpiDer HiDer is only limited to humans. Other mammals fare little better, especially considering that some of the frequencies found in the average SpiDer HiDer track are way beyond the capacity of the average human ear.

If you ever find yourself face to face with a dog licking bitter salty tears from its own eyes, then you can guarantee that someone has played it a SpiDer HiDer song.

15. Falcon Boy looked slightly rubbish?

Ellis knew that everyone was terrified. She knew it was something to do with Dr. Don't Know doing something to Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird. All the teachers at the Panic Town Elementary Academy urged their pupils to write letters to Dr. Don't Know pleading for the safe return of Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird. The youngest children drew pleading pictures instead.

Ellis had seen Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird seen directing traffic on bank holidays when the crowds of holidaymakers blocked the road. They both seemed to do far more harm than good and the queues for the car parks were longer than ever. Falcon Boy considered duties like this to be part of his new life. However, the Panic Town Police didn't see things quite the same way

According to Falcon Boy, the police were worried about a possible conflict of interests. Also, as he added to anyone listening, 'I suppose there is also the issue of being properly qualified.' Falcon Boy would glance over his shoulder. 'It might be an idea,' he would say conspiratorially, 'if the Police reviewed their operating procedures now that we are here to give them a much-needed helping hand.'

I am sure that this suggestion had reached Captain Lorimer. I am also sure that she wasn't too impressed. Even though Ellis knew that the two superheroes were probably a good thing to have around, she still couldn't help feeling that Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird looked slightly rubbish. Falcon Boy with his silly blue beak-cap-mask and Bewilder Bird with his shoes designed to look bird feet. They made it hard for him to run as he was always tripping over the elongated claws.

But Ellis already knew enough to know that she shouldn't really judge people by their appearances, despite the very serious challenges that Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird presented to this maxim
16. A New Beginning?

As she waited for her tea, Ellis listened to the Pearly Stockwell and the Interesting Twins Detective Comic Audiobook Series. This is one of the many commercial ventures to spring from the bestselling and forever-bewildering Pearly Stockwell and the Interesting Twins Wonder Detective Comic Book Super Series.

Pearly Stockwell is a six-year-old girl who solves puzzles, saves the day and achieves countless major triumphs that are forever beyond the adults who populate the world of these stories. Wes, Windy, and Wanderley Gordy are the Interesting Twins and the fact that there is actually three of them and that they aren't twins is apparently what makes them interesting.

In each episode, someone is kidnapped or something is stolen or threatened with total destruction, like a school, a train, a town, a livelihood or a way of life. Pearly and her friends always notice something that the police miss, or overhear a conversation on the bus. Other times they might decide that two men standing talking outside the cake shop look suspicious and the adventures begin.

Everything happens in Fallstown, a small place in the middle of nowhere that is somehow a perpetual magnet for all minds and matters criminally oriented.

In the first episode in the series, We Hope You Can, Pearly Stockwell, Pearly moves to Fallstown following a commuter train tragedy that killed her parents. She doesn't have much to bring to her new home apart from the fortune she inherited from her parents, and her big city ways.

An unfortunate misunderstanding with a flower seller and a taxi driver at the Fallstown railway station results in Pearly picking up the wrong suitcase. She opens the suitcase to discover an old telephone directory.

'Who brings a telephone directory on holiday with them?' Pearly says to herself. 'Surely, if they really needed a telephone number they could ask a policeman or someone who works at the Post Office.' With her curiosity piqued, Pearly decides to investigate the mystery.

She places an advert in the Fallstown Provider for detectives to join her in the investigation.

'Experience not essential,' reads the advertisement, 'but you must have a belief in truth, justice and an aching desire to find out things.'

The next day, Pearly receives a badly-scrawled letter inviting her to a secret rendezvous on the sandy beach at Fallstown Cove.

Pearly gets to the rendezvous early in order to spy on who might arrive and is disappointed to see two young boys sitting next to a telephone box.

Pearly narrows her eyes. 'Who are you and what is a telephone box doing on the beach?'

'We have come to join your detective gang,' replies the telephone box. 'My name is Wanderley Gordy and I am a master of disguise,' the telephone box continues. 'These are my brothers, Wes and Windy.'

Wes and Windy stand up and bow dramatically.

'We are the Interesting Twins,' says the box.

'But there are three of you,' replies Pearly.

'And that's what makes us so interesting!' exclaim the Interesting Twins together, and the adventures of Pearly Stockwell and the Interesting Twins begin.

17. Pearly Stockwell and the Interesting Twins

Pearly heads every investigation. She is also very good at telling people things, normally things that they already know. This is a profoundly annoying trait for a character to have but within the context of the stories, her big city ways are a useful narrative device.

For example, during The Lost Treasure of Fallstown, Pearly convinces the elderly Mrs. Elvira Toothpull, Fallstown's resident millionaire, to lend the Incredible Twins her antique sports car even though it is worth $300,000 and none of them are old enough to drive. As it turns out, they don't need the car to solve the mystery but the writers are happy to use this as an example of just how convincing Pearly can be.

Wes Gordy is the gang's muscle and his main purpose is to step in and stop someone from doing something mean to someone else, or else save the gang in some way that needs exceptional strength.

It is Wes who saves his friends from drowning in Fallstown Bay when he rips open the hatch on the sinking fishing boat at the thrilling climax of Pearly Meets the Ghostly Angler. It also takes a mighty dead-leg from Wes to get the Octopus's henchman to let go of Pearly's arm as the helicopter is about to take off with her on board in The Octopus and His Evil Plans for Pearly Stockwell.

As the telephone box demonstrates, Wanderley is a genius at disguising himself and no adventure is complete without Wanderley revealing himself from a disguise so ingenious that no one ever recognizes him.

At the end of Pearly and the Merchant Bankers, Wanderley disguises himself as the CEO of a multinational bank to help bring about the end of the Drumm Boys, a gang of corrupt financiers intent on bankrupting a small country.

Wanderley's disguise is convincing enough for the Drumm Boys to incriminate themselves via email and audiotape, surrender their passports and provide the Fallstown Police with the details of all their offshore bank accounts.

In Here Comes the Interesting Twins to Save the Day, Pearly, Wes and Windy have been kidnapped by Professor Ingenious, a mad scientist intent on taking over the world with his army of manky, mutant, melted monkeys and it takes Wanderley disguising himself as the President of the United States to finally put a stop to the manky, mutant, melted monkey menace.

Windy is the gang's athlete and it is his job to be ready to run for help when it is required. His natural athleticism allows him to run like the wind to notify the local authorities when smugglers threaten the local economy in Pearly Saves the Seaside. It also helps him escape from the clutches of the desperately dangerous teenage Bicycle Boys when they try to take over Fallstown in Windy Wins the Deadliest Race of his Little Life.
18. 'You really are our only help'

Ellis was listening to the exciting conclusion of Pearly Stockwell and the Letter that Was Hidden but Everyone Could Really See when she heard a soft voice she didn't recognize.

'Help,' said the voice. 'Please would someone help us?'

'That's strange,' thought Ellis. 'I don't recognize that voice.'

'Help,' repeated the voice desperately. 'Please would anyone help us?'

To begin with, Ellis thought that the voice belonged to one of the characters in the story. Wanderley had just disguised himself as a scarecrow and was standing in a turnip field at midnight waiting for the letter thief to rendezvous with his wicked one-legged accomplice.

Though it was a freezing January night, Wanderley stuck bravely to the task and had just gritted his teeth against the cold for the third time when Ellis heard the voice again.

'Help,' said the voice. 'You really are our only help.'

Wanderley wouldn't be calling for help, thought Ellis. He's a master of disguise and one of the Interesting Twins. Anyway, even if he did, no one would hear him apart from the bad guys and that would mean the story wouldn't make sense.

Ellis took off her earphones and looked around. There was no one in her bedroom. Her Mum was downstairs. Her Dad was still at work.

'Please help,' said the voice again. 'We really must get out of here.'

Ellis was puzzled. I bet you are as well. Whose voice is this? Who does it belong to? How can Ellis hear it? How is this going to work? Really? What now? Are you sure? Do I really have to keep reading? Should we just ignore this voice?

'Please don't ignore me,' said the voice, and there was a very real sound of panic evident now. 'If you don't listen then no one will.'

'Who are you?' asked Ellis. 'What do you want?'

'I'm Falcon Boy,' said Falcon Boy. 'I'm here with Bewilder Bird and normally we would be doing something to make Panic Town a better place but we have both woken up to find ourselves trapped somewhere dark and quiet.' He sounded scared. 'We don't know where we are or why we are where we are.'

Falcon Boy's words tumbled into Ellis's ear like sand falling through a hole in the bottom of a bucket. Ellis thought for a minute. She kind of knew that hearing Falcon Boy's voice could turn out to be really important for her and everyone else.

'How come I can hear you?' she asked.

And now we are at the heart of the matter.

19. What a coincidence!

You remember earlier when I listed all of those superpowers that the people chose for their superhero avatars in HeroVerse™? The list was a very long one and chock-full of exciting-sounding powers. Looking back now, I feel guilty that Falcon Boy wasn't allowed to add a superpower to that list. He was very disappointed once he found out.

Well, guess what? I changed my mind. Falcon Boy has got a superpower after all. He can now speak to people without having to stand next to them. Isn't that great?

Falcon Boy had no idea that this was going to happen. How could he? He doesn't even know who I am. Unless we happen to meet one day in the future. But that's for another story. Or maybe even a film. I'll introduce myself one day but that won't be happening anytime soon. I have also decided that Falcon Boy can use his new superpower right now. Which is lucky, because otherwise, this story might never get going again.

'I don't know where this ability has come from or how I am able to do it,' Falcon Boy continued, 'but I am now amazingly able to talk in your ear without having to be standing next to you.'

Falcon Boy stopped and thought for a moment.

'Which is lucky,' he continued, 'otherwise we might both be stuck wherever we happen to be for the rest of our lives.'

'Where are you?' asked Ellis. 'You do know that everyone is looking for you but can't find you anywhere? Dr. Don't Know was interviewed on the television but he wouldn't tell Juniper Jarvis where he has hidden you.'

'I knew it!' exclaimed Falcon Boy. 'I told you it was the work of Dr. Don't Know,' he said to Bewilder Bird. 'This means it is serious, very serious indeed.'

Falcon Boy turned back to Ellis.

'The problem is that we don't know where we are,' he said. 'If we don't know where we are, then we can't figure out how to escape, and if we can't figure out how to escape, then we won't be able to save the world from the evil plans of Dr. Don't Know.'

'Why are you asking me for help?' asked Ellis. 'I'm not old enough yet and there are lots of things I don't know how to do yet, like Kung Fu, topiary and electronics. I have no idea how to stop an international master criminal.' Ellis paused. 'More importantly,' she continued, 'you don't even know who I am.'

All of which, of course, is perfectly true.

'But that's exactly why you are the perfect person for me to be suddenly and surprisingly asking for help out of the blue,' replied Falcon Boy.

20. The reader is perplexed as well

When characters in stories are presented with things that they don't understand, or are placed into situations that they cannot comprehend, they are not the only ones to be confused. The reader is often perplexed as well and this is not always a good thing.

Now, I'm not taking my responsibility as the writer of this story too lightly here but I do believe that some writers feel their responsibilities too heavily and therefore feel too obliged to explain everything in too much detail. When this happens, it can leave no room for the reader to use their imagination.

Instead of being able to see events the way they want to, too much detail forces readers to only see things the way the writer wants them to. It leaves no room for interpretation and imagination. Furthermore, it makes very little difference to the characters either way.

For example, Falcon Boy was oblivious to all of this responsibility, explanation and imagination stuff and kept talking to Ellis, indifferent to any concerns over whether or not he was simply an innocent pawn caught up in a barefaced plot to take whacking great narrative liberties with a story. He just kept on talking.

'Dr. Don't Know will be expecting all the forces of law and order across the world to be mobilized in order to secure our immediate release and reinstatement as leading crime-fighting authority figures,' said Falcon Boy, somewhat misguidedly. 'He would never suspect someone like you, not in one hundred thousand million years.'

Falcon Boy had a point. International super-criminals tend to oversee vast criminal networks teeming with minions engaged in illegal activity, and all contributing to the creeping threat of a global menace. For example, the principle villain in the Pearly Stockwell and the Interesting Twins Wonder Detective Comic Book Super Series, as well as its audio counterpart, is the nefarious Octopus and Ellis remembered that Pearly always speaks about the Octopus's vast evil empire and 'his eight mean legs of greed, theft, evil, selfishness, anger, violence, meanness and insanity'.

'You cannot possibly be a master criminal,' thought Ellis, 'without an enormous evil empire and if you have an enormous evil empire then you would need lots and lots of evil people doing lots and lots of evil things for you. This would make it very easy not to know everything that was going on.'

21. Hairy Top Lips and Homemade Boots

Ellis knew that things weren't the way they were supposed to be. Even though they were trying to hide it from her, Ellis also knew that her Mum and Dad were very concerned about the situation. She had heard them over breakfast.

'I heard that he's a right old loony,' said Mum.

'I heard that too,' said Dad, 'but the two of them are hardly first-rate heroes, are they?' Dad looked out of the kitchen window. 'I can't understand why on earth he would bother to kidnap those two losers anyway.'

'They're not losers,' said Mum, 'just untried on the public stage.' She smiled. 'For all we know they could be the vanguard of a brand-new future...'

'Whaaaaat?' scoffed Dad, 'that little fool with the hairy top lip and his mate who can't walk in his homemade bird boots?' He scoffed again. 'In any case, if that's how they want the future to look then I'm telling you now, I'm not growing a moustache for anyone.'

Ellis knew that underneath all of his bluster, Dad was as worried as Mum.

'You could always shave the moustache off again,' said Mum, 'but preventing the destruction of the entire universe is a bit more complicated.'

Some people might think it very unfair that Falcon Boy had placed the responsibility for saving the entire world from some kind of as-yet undisclosed, but nonetheless, evil fate on Ellis. After all, she's only young, what does she know about saving the world?

Ellis is an ordinary little girl who lives an ordinary life and likes to do ordinary things with her very ordinary parents, but even though she is probably based upon a real girl who does live a very ordinary (but hopefully wonderful) life with her definitely very ordinary parents, Ellis is still a character in a story and therefore is not quite as ordinary as this paragraph might suggest.

This is all further complicated by the fact that it wasn't actually Falcon Boy who chose Ellis in the first place. It was me. I was the one who allowed Dr. Don't Know to kidnap Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird. I made the decision to give Falcon Boy a superpower, even though he lives in a world in a world where superpowers clearly don't exist.

It was also me that allowed Falcon Boy to use his narratively-spurious superpower to make contact with an ordinary girl busily minding her own business. Of course, it is the fact of Ellis being chosen that makes her extraordinary, but again, this was entirely down to me.

I hope you are not too confused here. This whole ordinary/extraordinary thing is easily explained.

22. Introducing Erica 'Neck Brace' Larkin

Who is ordinary and who isn't ordinary? Who decides who is extraordinary and who isn't extraordinary? Perhaps these questions make more sense when we consider the possibility that the central character of this adventure could easily have been someone else.

For example, we could be reading about the adventures of a small ingenious boy called Dunstable Johnson who is very handy in tight situations. Or, we could all be thrilling to the adventures of a swashbuckling amateur wrestler called Erica 'Neck Brace' Larkin. Erica investigates local mysteries in between wrestling bouts. This is just for starters.

The battle to rescue Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird from the clutches of the evil Dr. Don't Know and, by doing so, save the world from apparent destruction could have centred around the players and coaching staff of Wolseley Street F.C, an U12s amateur football team.

Football has all the hallmarks of great adventure as players grapple with triumph and adversity as they seek to win a championship or avoid being relegated. There is plenty of drama in an adventure like this.

If you don't like stories about footballers, then what about a rather nifty and exciting robot called Rocky Random? Rocky has a propulsion unit in his boots and can cross oceans if necessary. He is handy to know in a global emergency.

No? How about Eucalyptus McKenzie, the cartoon koala bear and government agent? The adventures of Eucalyptus McKenzie are yet to be written but I am pretty sure that this isn't the last we will hear about this daring koala bear.

Anyway, what I am trying to clumsily get at here is that it is Ellis who has been chosen by me to be chosen by Falcon Boy to help save the world from the devilish scheme of Dr. Don't Know. With this in mind, the best thing to do here is to stop worrying about whether or not Ellis is ordinary, extraordinary or somewhere in between. Instead, why don't we just find out how she gets on with getting on with it?

23. And Grimdulf Rides a Giant Talking Lion

The ((extra)ordinary) Ellis thought for a minute.

'What would Pearly Stockwell do?' she wondered. 'How would she go about going about it?' Ellis tapped her lip with her finger. 'Pearly would probably start by asking lots of questions and then use the answers to find out what to do.'

As Ellis thought about this, she remembered one of the less original and least satisfying of the Pearly Stockwell adventures, Pearly and the Missing Magic Ring.

The Pearly Stockwell adventure series is published by IT Comics and in their early days the company really struggled. Pearly and the Missing Magic Ring was a desperately misguided attempt to reach a wider audience with the Pearly Stockwell series.

Without even the slightest hint of professional shame, Pearly is 'allowed' to discover a magical kingdom while clearing out one of her wardrobes. Never one to refuse a challenge, Pearly sets off to see what she can find.

Unsurprisingly, Pearly finds a world gripped by a struggle between the forces of good and evil. Grimdulf Gloompants leads the good guys. He is a long-bearded wizard who rides a giant talking lion. A one-eyed witch called Sharon is in charge of the bad guys.

As the plot thickens, Pearly and the Interesting Twins are asked to deliver an important message to someone important quite far away. On the way, they are captured by a gang of nasty Noblins and imprisoned.

Everyone manages to escape but Pearly gets separated and begins to wander lost in an underground network of caves.

Even loyal readers of the comic book series found it hard not to consider cancelling their subscription at the moment that Pearly stumbles upon a ring and, without thinking, puts it in her pocket.

Unbeknown to her, the ring is the property of a pathetic-looking creature called Gallop who manages to trap Pearly in his dank, dismal, fish-stinking lair.

'You have something that is very precious to me,' says the pathetic-looking Gallop to Pearly, without even a faint glimmer of irony. 'It is mine, it is.'

'Is it?' replies Pearly quick-wittedly, stunning the pathetic creature with the authority in her voice. 'How precious exactly?'

Gallop isn't sure what to say.

'Very precious,' he ventures, 'very precious, indeed.'

But Pearly has the upper hand now and probes the pathetic creature further with her penetrating questions.

'Just how precious?'

'Very!'

'How precious is very precious?'

'Very, very!'

'But is that precious enough?'

'I don't know.'

'Why don't you know? I thought you said it was precious?'

'I did!'

'Then why don't you know?'

'I do! I do! I do!'

Gallop gets very angry and it is at this point that Pearly knows she has him.

'You don't know, do you?' she says.

'No,' says the pathetic-looking creature pathetically.

'I'm going now,' says Pearly firmly. 'Don't try and follow me.'

Gallop says nothing. He sits sniveling on a slimy rock. Pearly leaves to find her friends and continue the great adventure.

It was only by sacking the writing team, promising faithfully to never ever do anything like this again (and also offering a year's free subscription to every reader) that IT Comics survived the fallout from Pearly and the Missing Magic Ring.

24. It goes without saying...

Inspired by Pearly Stockwell, Ellis began to ask some questions.

'Are you underwater?' she began. 'Can you hear fish swimming, dolphins talking or the secret singing of crabs?'

'I can't hear anything,' said Falcon Boy. And even though he strained really hard, it was true, he couldn't. Ellis tried again.

'Are you really hot like you would be in the desert? Or if you were buried at the earth's core?'

'I don't think so,' replied Falcon Boy. 'It is getting a bit stuffy in here, but I think that is due more to the fact that me and Bewilder Bird are piled in on top of each other than because we are somewhere ferociously hot.'

Ellis thought again.

'Are you really cold?' she continued. 'Do you think you might be at the South Pole or floating in deep dark outer space?'

To Ellis, like all children everywhere and hopefully some adults as well, the world is a never-filled box that overflows with the most marvelous, magical, wonderful and amazing all kinds of everything. All you have to do is be alive to the possibility that there is always more to know.

Like the most satisfying drink you have ever tasted, one that you can't stop gulping down, Ellis is simply consumed by the desire to learn and she drinks eagerly, heartily and regularly.

As a result, her head is full of facts and figures and pictures and faces and ideas and theories and notions and fantasies and sightings and soundings and it goes without saying that (I like it so much when people say this that I wrote it and then put a line through it to somehow prove a point) some of these are very real and some of these are not so real. Some of these are imagined and some are made-up. Others are half-remembered or almost-forgotten, but all of these ideas and things are completely compelling and absolutely, undoubtedly and utterly her own.

25. World Savers Wanted™

Ellis thought some more.

'What do you remember about being kidnapped? Where were you? What were you doing? How did it happen?' This was a lot of questions and Ellis waited for Falcon Boy to reply. Ellis felt sure that she could hear him thinking.

'We were both at home as usual,' said Falcon Boy. 'Even superheroes have quiet days, and so I had the laptop on my lap and was busy checking my inbox for any new messages from World Savers Wanted™.'

World Savers Wanted™ can be found at www.worldsaverswanted.hero and is a listed company created by a twelve-year-old boy called Mulvey Cavell, who saw a gap in the market for matching superheroes looking for things to do with things that needed doing by superheroes.

Mulvey realised that for every superhero being summoned by an enormous searchlight whenever they were needed, there would be many other equally-deserving superheroes that didn't have such a high profile and therefore probably needed a helping hand when it came to finding suitable things to do.

Mulvey also understood that not all superheroes wanted to try and save the world. Some were just happy doing things like opening supermarkets, posing for photographs or putting on action displays at garden fetes.

Working from his bedroom, Mulvey built the website and devised the marketing campaign. Things were slow to begin with but once the mass exodus from HeroVerse™ started, World Savers Wanted™ began to get very busy – so busy, in fact, that Mulvey Cavell became a multi-millionaire at thirteen and retired from public life.

World Savers Wanted™ works on the same principles as any other online agency. You complete an online questionnaire, upload a current image of yourself and pay an annual membership fee.

Once your application is processed, World Savers Wanted™ will seek to match your profile with the most appropriate tasks contained in its vast and ever-increasing database.

A similar principle applies if you have some work for a superhero to do. Once the registration process is complete, you are free to upload your superhero task request. Your task request is offered to the most appropriate superheroes and they then choose to accept the task or not.

Feedback is given on the completion of each task, whether successful or otherwise, and as you gain more and more positive feedback, so you become eligible to receive more and more difficult task requests. In this way the system always hopes to match the right hero to the right task.

World Savers Wanted™ allows you to define your choice of tasks by selecting from a drop-down menu. Falcon Boy had ambitiously registered himself and Bewilder Bird in the 'Heroic Duo Seeking to Save the World' section but as you can imagine, they hadn't yet accumulated enough positive feedback to be eligible for that category. Not that Falcon Boy was in any way perturbed.

'Ambition is one of the many things that I wish to be known for,' said Falcon Boy ambitiously to his friend. 'Without ambition, you have no real desire to do things,' he concluded grandly.

Bewilder Bird silently nodded. Falcon Boy opened his inbox again.

'Dear Superhero,

Thank you for recently registering with World Savers Wanted™. Your application has now been approved and you are now eligible to be matched with tasks that require superheroic attention.

Please note that you will only be sent task requests appropriate to your feedback status. Your current feedback status is 'Cat Rescuer'.

If you have any questions please contact us on our premium rate telephone number.

We hope that you have a long and successful career with World Savers Wanted™ but if no task requests are received within the space of one calendar year, we guarantee to return your half of your registration fee.

Yours Sincerely

World Savers Wanted™'

'You won't be sending half of my fee back,' said Falcon Boy to himself.

26. The Building Channel

'It really is hard work trying to be a superhero,' said Falcon Boy to Ellis, 'and I didn't realize just how hard this hard work was until I started working hard to be a hard-working one.' Ellis heard him sigh. Listen carefully and you'll hear me sighing as well. Falcon Boy does go on a bit.

'While I was working hard at being a superhero, Bewilder Bird was watching television. I prefer the radio but the Building Channel was showing the season finale of Bewilder Bird's favourite show, Paint Tales.'

'Paint Tales?' said Ellis. 'What kind of show is that?'

'A badly-boring one,' replied Falcon Boy.

He's not wrong.

Now in its twelfth season, the premise of Paint Tales is a simple one; a single tin of paint is followed from the factory where it is made to the place where it is used, via the shop where it is sold.

For enthusiasts of the programme, the joy of the journey is immense and somehow almost immeasurable. As a result, Paint Tales has now become a global, if somewhat esoteric, phenomenon. Discovering that the tin of paint you thought was going to be used as a humble undercoat turns out instead to be the final flourish of a ceiling in a converted bathroom can be close to life-changing for aficionados of the programme.

For anyone else, the premise of the programme is almost as disturbing as actually watching an episode and both the existence and continuance of Paint Tales has become a major topic of cultural debate. For some it is the ultimate guilty pleasure, for others it is the producers who should be feeling guilty.

Falcon Boy laughed quietly.

'The season finale of Paint Tales was about a tin of red paint, Bewilder Bird's favourite colour, and he had been looking forward to watching it all day. He had even left a note on the fridge to remind himself that it was on that evening.'

For future reference, interest, or indeed, warning, depending on what it is that you like to watch or not watch on television or any other screen, Paint Tales is from the same production company that created Concrete Superstar.

Many media experts believed that Concrete Superstar was going to be the next big thing in format television but the programme only ran for a single season. As a result, the five episodes that do exist have achieved cult status.

Each week, Concrete Superstar challenged three celebrities to lay the perfect concrete patio. Aided by experts, a whole range of stars of stage, screen (both big and small), music and anywhere else mixed, shoveled, poured, levelled, screed, bull-floated, hand-floated, rounded (if required), cut-in, and broomed their concrete in a race against both the clock and the other contestants.

The locations chosen were both indoor and outdoor and for the second season, it had been proposed that the programme go to different locations around the world so that factors like local building customs, union regulations and temperature extremes could be brought into play. Sadly, however, this was never to be.

Like many other people (but sadly, as it turns out, ultimately not enough other people), Bewilder Bird found Concrete Superstar really exciting because you could never really tell which one of the chosen celebrities would be the best at pouring concrete just by looking.

For example, who could have known that Dame Circular Rosetwine, opera singer and biscuit entrepreneur, would beat upper body muscle model and self-confessed DIY enthusiast Flint Roland in the first episode?

'I thought I had it in the bag,' said Flint afterwards, 'until one of the production crew told me that I had poured the concrete upside down. It wasn't until I had ripped everything out and started again that I realised they had been pulling my leg.'

In the second episode, renowned aristocratic bad-boy ventriloquist Sheridan Shaw and his foul-breathed puffer fish puppet, Puff the Puffer Fish, lost out to one-time pop sensation Dorothy Sister, lead singer of the reasonably-famous (and reasonably-named) Dorothy Sisters.

Puff the Puffer Fish refused to cooperate during the aggregate mixing phase and allowed Dorothy Sister to win by a technical default, even though she had managed to bury one of her high heels beneath a crazy-paving slab.

27. A Whiff of Hot Oil

'Okay,' said Ellis. 'Then what happened?'

This is great, she thought. I sound just like Pearly Stockwell. Maybe one day, someone is going to write a story about me trying to solve a mystery or investigate a disappearance, kidnapping or other solar-system-threatening situation.

Falcon Boy continued.

'The doorbell rang and I remember thinking that this was very strange as the supper party we had organized for Councillor Denver Footswerve and his wife, Peculia, wasn't until next week.'

Falcon Boy paused here as he allowed the names that he had dropped to fall heavily to the floor with a hearty thud. Ellis didn't notice but I'm sure you did.

'Bewilder Bird was very annoyed at having to answer the door but I was busy on the laptop and it was his turn to go. I listened and waited but he didn't come back. The doorbell rang again so I put down my laptop and went into the hall. Bewilder Bird was nowhere to be seen and so I thought that maybe he was standing out on the porch talking to a well-wisher.'

'Just as I opened the front door, I remember catching a brief whiff of something that smelled like hot oil but before I had time to do anything, there was a bright flash of light. The next thing I remember was waking up here with Bewilder Bird.'

Falcon Boy sounded very upset and even though the whole thing was beginning to get very weird indeed, Ellis kind of already knew – as I am sure that all of you do too – that it was going to be down to her to do something to try and find Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird and, by doing so, help save the world from total and utter destruction.

'I'm going to find you,' Ellis said, and hoped that she sounded like Pearly Stockwell. 'I'm going to come and find you both and help you escape.'

'Great,' said Falcon Boy, 'but how? You don't know where we are.'

'No,' said Ellis, 'I don't know where you are but I am still going to find you. I am going to use all my powers of imagination and thinking and deduction to find a way to find out where you are and rescue you.'

Ellis felt brave and helpful and, for a moment, dreamed of one day forming her own gang of clever clue solvers like the Interesting Twins.

28. The Disappearance of Dr. Workaday Trimfit

For all of the digressions and complications so far, Ellis's plan was actually very simple. She would go to Falcon Boy's house and see if she could find any clues.

It won't surprise you to learn that something very similar happened in We Really Hope You Can, Pearly Stockwell when, dissatisfied with the slow progress being made by the Fallstown Police, Pearly takes it upon herself to investigate the disappearance of Dr. Workaday Trimfit, founder and headmaster of the Fallstown Junior and Senior Academy For Boys and For Girls.

The Fallstown Junior and Senior Academy for Boys and For Girls (the founding charter of the Fallstown Junior and Senior Academy for Boys and For Girls made it a legal requirement that whenever the Fallstown Junior and Senior Academy for Boys and For Girls was mentioned in any media form that its full title, the Fallstown Junior and Senior Academy for Boys and For Girls, is always used in full and never ever abbreviated).

This would also explain why any correspondence ever received by anyone from the Fallstown Junior and Senior Academy for Boys and For Girls tended to be on the rather bulky side and normally didn't fit through the average letterbox.

As she embarks upon her preliminary investigation, Pearly spots a dirty rubber glove on the floor outside the headmaster's study. The police had already dusted the entire Fallstown Junior and Senior Academy for Boys and For Girls for fingerprints, and didn't think that the glove was important.

'Sorry, Pearly,' says Inspector Benson, 'my boys don't think the glove means anything to anyone.'

Pearly isn't convinced.

'But the glove has a name tag inside it,' she points out. 'If we could just read the name, we could have a lead.'

'The name could be anyone's name,' counters the Inspector. 'What would that tell us?'

'It would tell us the name of someone who might have had something to do with Dr. Trimfit's disappearance,' says Pearly forcefully.

'It might,' says the Inspector, 'but it might also tell us the name of someone who had absolutely nothing to do with the disappearance and I can't have my boys harassing innocent people now, can I? That would never do.'

As usual, Pearly was going to have to try and sort things out herself. Following an all-night stint with her homemade chromatography kit, Pearly is able to identify the glove as possibly belonging to Burgess, the caretaker of the Fallstown Junior and Senior Academy for Boys and For Girls.

'I knew he would be the prime suspect,' she crows triumphantly. Pearly had always considered Burgess to be a suspicious sort of fellow. 'After all, he talks to himself,' she continues, 'that's a sure sign that something suspicious is going on.'

Wanderley disguises himself as a classroom skeleton and waits for three days in a dusty storeroom before he hears Burgess asking the kidnapped headmaster of the Fallstown Junior and Senior Academy for Boys and For Girls if he wanted his tea yet.

This is all the evidence Pearly needs and, once again, Windy has to run really fast.

'Run, Windy, run,' says Pearly and Windy was off before she even had time to tell him where to run to. At the same time, Wes uses his strength to keep Burgess locked in the storeroom, while Pearly uses her detecting skills to follow the very loud but slightly muffled shouting that leads her to discover Dr. Trimfit locked in a wardrobe.

Even at her age, Ellis already knew enough to know that, just like Pearly Stockwell, everything depended upon the detail. If she could just get to Falcon Boy's house, she was sure she would find out what was going on. But how could she possibly get there?

She was too young to drive a car and her tea was nearly ready. She couldn't ask her Mum if it was alright to have her tea later because she needed to set off on a quest to try and rescue Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird and save the world from the madness of Dr. Don't Know.

And here we are presented with a very interesting narrative challenge: how on earth can a young girl leave the safety of her own home to go off and investigate the kidnapping and disappearance of two superheroes by an internationally renowned super villain, and along the way potentially get caught up in all kinds of dangerous and world-threatening events?

How am I going to get out of this one?

29. More Dubious Narrative Liberties are Taken

Getting Ellis out of her house is a problem that has caused me more concern than many of the other sections of this increasingly dubious tale. The only sensible solution that I can come up with is to present four viable possibilities and leave it up to each of you to decide for yourselves which possibility you prefer the most.

This way might allow me to feel slightly less concerned about behaving irresponsibly and inappropriately or, worse, condoning irresponsible or inappropriate behaviour.

After all, it is a big responsibility to write something that someone else might read. Because of this, I don't really want anyone to think that letting a young, unaccompanied girl out of her house to investigate a kidnapping and try to save the world is a good idea in real life.

However, I do need Ellis to get out of her house and look for Falcon Boy. Otherwise the story stops here and goes no further. And no one will ever know what happens next.

So, going back to the options, whichever one you choose will have the same end result: the next time we meet Ellis she will be standing outside Falcon Boy's house. The only thing you have to decide is how you want her to get there.

If anyone is looking for further assurance here, then it is worth me pointing out that I have absolutely no intention of letting anything terrible happen to Ellis. You have my word. So here are the options:

30. Option Number One

Ellis knows that Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird live in a small house at the very edge of the Panic Town Park and Ornamental Gardens. Falcon Boy's brand-new superpower allows him to say something to someone and make it sound like an idea that has just popped into their head. He suggested to Ellis's Mum that it might be a nice to surprise Ellis with a spontaneous trip to the park.

'I've just had a great idea,' said Ellis's Mum. 'I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier.' (We do!)

'It's a lovely evening and your dad won't be home for a while, so why don't we go and have some fun together in the playground?'

Ellis understood immediately that Mum's idea had come from Falcon Boy.

'Thank you,' she whispered to the kidnapped superhero.

'No problem,' said Falcon Boy. 'Our house is just by the gate so you shouldn't have any problem getting a chance to take a look.'

Ellis and her Mum reached the gates of the park when a voice called out, 'Hello there, and how are you? I haven't seen you for ages. How have you been?' It was one of Mum's chatty friends and Ellis knew that she would be waiting for a while as the two friends chat.

'Here's my chance,' she thought and slipped through the gate that lead to Falcon Boy's house.

We won't think about what will happen once Mum and her friend stop talking. That's for another time.

31. Option Number Two

Now, this option is slightly different to the first one and I am not sure that I really like it that much. Nevertheless, it is a viable one so I'll let you decide. It will also alleviate the concern about what will happen when Ellis's Mum and her friend stop talking in Option Number One.

Falcon Boy uses his superpower again and convinces Ellis's Mum that she really needs to give more back to society, and she can start doing this by calling a direct marketing company and offering to complete as many surveys as they have got.

'Really?' came the unscripted response from the extremely surprised direct marketeer. 'All of them?'

'Absolutely,' said Mum. 'I have always thought what a thankless task you people must have and I suddenly got the idea to do something to make your job a bit more bearable.'

'Thank you very much,' came the reply, still unscripted. 'This may take a while,' said the marketeer, 'so I hope you are sitting down.'

'I am now,' said Ellis's Mum as she sits down on a kitchen stool. 'So what do you want to know?'

Ellis realised that this was going to take a while so she took the opportunity to grab her scooter, open the front door and head off towards the park without her Mum knowing.

Obviously, I am not encouraging anyone to be as reckless as to let their small child out of the house unattended. Or, indeed, phone a direct marketing company directly. Or do both. Nevertheless, some of you might like the options that this option offers.
32. Option Number Three

In Option Number Three, Falcon Boy does not use his superpower to con, convince, connive or conspire. Instead, and as can happen very occasionally (and only really in stories but possibly in real life but probably never in this way), it just so happens that something magically coincidental happens to Ellis.

For reasons probably to do with probability, possibility, impossibility and, of course, improbability, this option might work better if this book was a film, or when this book is a film (aim high, I always say).

In the film of this book, you could have a scientist explain what is about to happen. The scientist would be able to make it sound very likely and convincing. There is no scientist in this story about to explain anything but that doesn't mean that one won't be created for the screenplay. It happens all the time.

Failing all this, it would really take a separate book to properly justify what is about to happen, if any justification would be possible, so perhaps we should accept that what is about to happen happens, because who would want to read a book about this sort of thing anyway? Watching a film is a different story altogether but that is for a different story.

Anyway, Ellis accidentally pressed pause on her MP3 player when she meant to press 'Stop' and as she did so, she accidentally managed to pause the world of her house.

Ellis walked into the kitchen to see her Mum standing by the back door, paused and frozen in time.

'I'm just popping out to save the world by finding out what has happened to Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird and then rescue them before Dr. Don't Know can put his evil plans into action,' she said.

Mum didn't reply. How could she? She had just been paused by an extremely convenient but profoundly improbable and wholly-shabby plot device.

Let's see how they handle this option in the film.

33. Option Number Four

Finally, if you are still here at this point and haven't given up reading in protest over the first three options, perhaps Option Number Four is the best option on offer today. I certainly hope that it is very attractive as an option or indeed, as attractive as an option ever can be because, after all, it is only an option and the whole point of an option is exactly that; it is only an option.

Anyway, for this option, I am asking you to choose to use your imagination and decide for yourself how Ellis manages to get from her house to Falcon Boy's.

Now, I don't want to put too much pressure on you if you choose this option, but you must understand that the rest of the story isn't really going to work if you don't manage to get Ellis from here to there so be sure to give it your best shot.

You may have to deal with some slight technical or even ethical issues, but I'm sure that you will manage somehow. I have left you some space here in the story to add your own ideas. I think three lines should do.

INSERT YOUR IDEA HERE:

1.............................................................

2.............................................................

3.............................................................

34. Loving You Loving Us

Falcon Boy's house was inside a small close beside the Panic Town Park and Ornamental Gardens. A high hedge surrounded the house and Falcon Boy was convinced that this hedge is the one thing that was stopping hordes of well-wishers and autograph-hunters from knocking on the door.

The house was pink-painted stone with blue clematis following a trellis up and over the porch. There were two windows on the ground floor either side of the front door and two windows above them. Each window was neatly finished with net curtains.

The bright red front door clashed with the pink walls. A handmade sign stuck on the metal flap of the letterbox read 'Well-Wishers and Autograph-Seekers Always Welcome'.

You would imagine that a very old lady shared this house with a small waddling dog named Prince, who is fond of minced chicken breast and fresh cream. You would never suspect that two superheroes intent on making the world a better place called this home. This got Ellis thinking.

Ellis wanted to be a mechanic or a vet when she grew up, but if it ever so happened that she changed her mind and decided to become a superhero like Falcon Boy or a master detective like Pearly Stockwell who, incidentally, lived in a converted lighthouse that she first inherited from a long-lost relative in Pearly Stockwell and the Letter from the Past, Ellis thought that she would probably need something more impressive than this cute-looking doll's house of a house.

'I would have to have a fountain in the front garden,' she reasoned. 'That would look good and I could colour the water with lights for special occasions.

'There would have to be a landing pad on the roof because by the time I am grown up, everyone will have a flying car. And I would definitely need a network of secret tunnels all linked up and leading to the sort of places that only superheroes and their friends would need to go.

'Also, a laboratory,' she decided. 'I would have to look at fingerprints and other clues, and would need a row of white coats hanging on hooks as well as a wall full of computer screens. And everyone needs a radar room complete with a built-in periscope/telescope combination, and a computer disguised as a television disguised as a bookshelf.

'Maybe even a sliding chute for a quick escape built into the bathroom for when enemies threatened to put a stop to my crime fighting? The front door could also be invisible so that only invited guests, fellow crime fighters, clue solvers and not forgetting of course, family and friends, could visit.

'I'm also going to need a hammock swinging in a very quiet part of the garden, so that I can get plenty of rest between adventures and meditate when the wickedness of the world momentarily gets too much for me and I need to unwind.'

In one of Ellis's favourite adventures, The Circus Has Lost a Clown, there is a moment when Pearly stands still in front of the visiting circus tent until an idea about what to do next comes to her 'like a bolt out of the blue'.

Now, Ellis wasn't so sure that she liked the idea of a bolt coming at her out of the blue, whatever and wherever that was, but she thought that if she just stood and stared at the house for a while then she might start to have an idea about what she needed to do next.

So, Ellis stood and she stared. She stared and she stood. It wasn't long before she started to think that just standing and staring wasn't really going to help her get very far.

So, Ellis stood and worried. She worried and she stood and just when she thought that this standing and staring and worrying was becoming too much, something caught her eye.

Tucked beneath the doormat and half-hidden by the evening shadows, Ellis saw a piece of very curious-looking paper. It was yellow with big black writing on it. She bent down to pick it up. It was a backstage pass for Doodah's homecoming concert at seven o'clock that evening at the Panic Town Stadium.

'Falcon Boy,' Ellis whispered. 'I think I've found something useful.'

'Well done,' said Falcon Boy. 'What is it?'

'It is a backstage pass for tonight's Doodah concert,' she replied.

After thirty-three shows in seventeen days, Panic Town's finest popular music combination act, or Doodah, as they are known to their millions of adoring fans, were set to play the final concert in their Loving You Loving Us Tour that evening at the Panic Town Stadium.

According to the advance publicity, the show promised to be 'the show to end all shows' (a claim that could be taken in more ways than one).

Ellis thought for a moment.

'I'll have to go there next, won't I?' she asked Falcon Boy.

'You will,' he replied, trying to sound sagely. 'A clue this obvious is something that no one can afford to ignore. You'll have to see what happens when you get there.'

'You're right,' said Ellis. 'I have no choice.'

'You're right,' said Falcon Boy. 'You have no choice.'

They are both right. Ellis really had no choice.

35. Pop Watch

Pop Watch is twenty-five years old and though it hasn't always had its finger on the right pulse, it has at least been around long enough to occasionally get things right. The episode just beginning now is one of those occasions.

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

As the opening credits roll, we see a mass of silhouetted dancers furiously stepping to the recently remixed theme tune sung, as always, by The Pop Watchers.

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Currently hosted by everyone's latest favourite presenter, Bright Diamond Davies, Pop Watch is a weekly rundown of downloads, hit tunes, interviews, games, jokes and other very jolly popular things that the show's ageing producers hope will one day make it the most popular music show around.

From his early days as an onscreen scenery shifter via a brief stint as a midnight weather man, Bright Diamond Davies has now found what he hopes is his big break and is determined to do everything he possibly can to make himself a permanent fixture on Pop Watch.

Sparkling fake diamonds stud a baseball cap which Bright Diamond continually repositions live on air, causing the studio lights to diffuse from the top of his head in a thousand blinding directions all at once.

Everyone on television needs a catch phrase and Bright Diamond punctuates every sentence with the now legendary (but not always for the right reasons) 'Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey!'

The wonders of modern technology, combined with a rather generous budget, mean that the set of Pop Watch now boasts an ever-changing virtual backdrop and as the theme tune fades for the start of today's programme, Bright Diamond Davies is 'standing' on the surface of the Sun.

'Here are we are once again, friends of mine from everywhere - Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey! – and a massive, mad and massively mad welcome to this week's Pop Watch.'

Camera One cuts to a close shot of Bright Diamond and he suddenly looks very, very sad.

'I have bad news, my many friends, bad, bad news indeed.' Bright Diamond pauses for effect and then continues sadly, 'the worst news that you will ever have the misfortune to hear.'

Cut to Camera Two as the lights dim and Bright Diamond's face is caught in a haunting spotlight. He sighs.

'I'm sorry to have to be the one who has to tell you this but...'

Bright Diamond is a master of manipulation and this particular moment to milk is a moment to milk unlike any other moment milked in the history of milked moments.

'We...

Are...

Only...

Joined...

Today...

By...

Those...

Happy...

Dappy...

Popsters...'

He pauses a final tiny time.

'Doodah!!!!!!!!!!!

Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey!'

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

The studio audience go wild as Davey, Donny, Daphne and Deirdre Doodah materialize on the sofa next to Bright Diamond's retro rocket stool. With real abandon, Bright Diamond high-fives himself before moving on to do the same with Doodah.

'Hi Six,' he squeals. 'Hi Seven and Eight. Hi Nine. Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey!'

Doodah try to return the gesture but their timing is slightly off. Bright Diamond sits back down.

'So Doodah are here!!!!!'

The audience go wild.

'How are you guys today?'

'We are One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good,' say Doodah as one and in a carefully-rehearsed manoeuvre that they almost carry off, Davey, Donny, Daphne and Deirdre stick their thumbs up for the camera.

In case you aren't sure what is going on here, Doodah's thumbs-up manoeuvre is a reference to the title of their latest galaxy-busting hit. You know? The one that goes like this:

We are One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good,

Bringing Joy to the Neighbourhood,

Nothing ever Stops us Smiling,

Nothing ever Could,

We Just Keep on Going Because

We are One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good

'Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey!' says Bright Diamond. He turns to Davey Doodah.

'Davey Doodah, are you excited about tonight's concert?'

According to the latest edition of the Doodah Friendship Holiday Annual for Lifelong and Special Fans Like You, available in hardback, softback, download, e-book or audio, pirate, torrent or shoplift, Davey Doodah really likes lemonade and when he isn't working, he enjoys turning old birthday cards into gift tags.

His favourite ready meal is lasagna and if he wasn't in Doodah, he thinks he would like to build schools for really, really poor and hungry children, 'to help them with learning books and stuff.'

'I'm really, really, really, really excited,' Davey replies toothfully. 'It feels just like we are coming home.'

'That is because you are,' says Bright Diamond rather too quickly. He turns to Camera Four and grins. 'You were all born in Panic Town.'

Camera Five for catchphrase.

'Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey!'

Cut back to a slightly sheepish-looking Davey.

'Yeah, I know I was born there,' says Davey, 'but it does still feel like we're coming home, just in a slightly different way.'

Thinking on his feet, Bright Diamond realizes that Davey could very well be heading down a very complicated avenue if he keeps up the coming home chat so instead, he turns to bonny bouncing Donny Doodah.

Donny is the drummer and whilst this may be a nominal role, no one can ever say that Donny doesn't do his best. He doesn't really say too much, which is quite lucky because he really doesn't have much to say.

His favourite ready meal is also lasagna and until he was banned for insurance purposes, his favourite hobby was setting off small outdoor fireworks indoors.

Camera Six for a wide shot followed by a cut back to a close shot of the drummer's face.

'Donny, is there a message you want to give to your fans ahead of your concert later?'

'Not really,' says a grinning Donny. 'Just tell them to watch me drum. I'm good, I am.'

Cut back to Camera Five.

'Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey!'

Daphne Doodah is next. Her job is to play the tambourine. In the Friendship Annual, it says that she hopes that her time in Doodah will help her learn about the world and 'what different people do in different places at different times.'

Her favourite ready meal is also listed as lasagna and when she is not playing the tambourine in Doodah, she likes sticking sequins onto her shoes with superglue and watching films of kittens sleeping.

'I think I'm speaking for all of us,' she says, 'when I say how excited we are about tonight's concert.'

Daphne smiles into the camera.

'We love all our fans everywhere but we love our fans in Panic Town the most, especially our friends and family who are obviously our fans as well.'

'Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey!' says Bright Diamond again. 'That's really great. Before we go, I would like to ask Deirdre who came up with the idea for your latest outfits.'

Doodah are wearing matching silver and purple spacesuits, complete with heavy moon boots and large glass space helmets, which they are holding under their arms. Each helmet is filled with water and has a shoal of tiny tropical fish flashing purple and silver as they swim frantically round and round.

Deirdre is the oldest member of Doodah and designs all their outfits herself. According to the Deirdre page in the Doodah Friendship Holiday Annual for Lifelong and Special Fans Like You, her favourite ready meal is also lasagna but she only eats the sauce and picks out the meat and the pasta. When not touring the world with Doodah, Deirdre likes to go out onto the streets in disguise and surprise people at bus stops and supermarkets.

'You should see their faces,' she says, 'when I tell them that they knew it was me all along but they were just too shy to approach me.'

She smiles at Camera Twelve.

'We all talk about what we want to wear and then I go away and think about it and then come back to tell the band what I have thought about. That way, we all know what's going on and then someone else goes away and makes our outfits.'

I'm pretty sure that there is much more that Deirdre wants to say but Bright Diamond looks at his watch and Camera Six cuts back to Camera One.

'Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey!' booms Bright Diamond. 'Welcome to the end of yet another show.' Doodah dematerialize and the set changes again. Bright Diamond is now floating deep underwater.

'There you go, Pop Watchers, an exclusive interview with Doodah ahead of tonight's homecoming concert.' Bright Diamond pretends to swim a stroke.

'Well how's that, then? Ka-boooey!'

The screen fades to darkness and the theme tune begins again.

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

Pop Watch, Pop Watch, Wanna Watch, Pop Watch

36. Dr. Don't Know's Submarine

Extraordinary stories about extraordinary heroes normally need extraordinary villains with extraordinary gadgets and extraordinary widgets and extraordinary deeds, facilitated by mind-numbingly extraordinary technology.

All this sounds extraordinarily exciting but this story is slightly different, so I need to tone down expectations by rewriting the paragraph you have just finished reading. How about this?

Stories about heroes normally need villains with gadgets and widgets and deeds, facilitated by technology.

That sounds more like it. There is not much about this story that is extraordinary; its heroes, villains, super or otherwise. However, all is not lost.

Dr. Don't Know does have a global crime network. He also has a large submarine that he uses as his secret base but none of this is quite as glamorous as it sounds. Let me explain.

Global crime networks expand and contract over the life of a super villain and Dr. Don't Know's network had experienced a downturn in recent years. Profits have been down for a while now and this is why he has a submarine.

During the good times, Dr. Don't Know rented office space in many of the major cities around the world. He also had penthouse apartments and hotels suites on permanent stand-by, just in case the crimes he was working on necessitated an overnight stay somewhere.

Legions and legions of uniformed staff manned these offices and apartments and suites, ready to serve his every criminal whim.

However, all of this renting and hiring and manning and possible overnight-staying was incredibly expensive. When the crime times were good, Dr. Don't Know felt justified in spending this kind of money but once the crime times were not quite so good, Dr. Don't Know's army of accountants, in the last thing they did for their boss before they were all fired, reviewed Dr. Don't Know's income and expenditure and concluded that he was paying too much for too much and needed to start cutting back.

So, all of the office space and penthouse apartments and hotel suites were given up, as were the legions of uniformed staff manning them. Realizing that he had to base himself somewhere in order to remain both at large and in business, Dr. Don't Know bought a second-hand submarine called Dr. Don't Know's Submarine.

Straight away, I am sure you will agree that this is a terrible name for anything, let alone the sub-aquatic headquarters of an international master criminal down on his luck. However, in a spirit of team building that he has since come to regret on a daily basis, Dr. Don't Know ran a competition amongst the few employees he had left to name the vessel. The winning name was drawn from a hat.

Dr. Don't Know's Submarine is a terrible name for the vessel but things could have been a whole lot worse if one of the other entries had been picked instead. Imagine if the submarine had been called Float Float or Crime Swim? What about Giant Swimming Flying Thing? Sea Sky 33? Dr. Don't Know's Evil Underwater Submarine and Criminal Hidden Hideout Machine?

Dr. Don't Know's Submarine constantly patrolled the waters of the world, hoping to avoid detection by staying partially submerged for hours at a time.

According to its operating manual, Dr. Don't Know's Submarine can also fly short distances and be driven the wrong way down a motorway but no one, Dr. Don't Know included, has been brave enough to put this to the test.

Though it was converted to Dr. Don't Know's specific specifications, the submarine doesn't have the finest of finishes.

The doors don't slide open with a beautifully silent whoosh. They stick when you try to slide them open and so you have to pull really hard and worry that you are going to rip them off their hinges.

There is no lift between the floors and the metal stairs are thin, wet and tortuously windy. You take your life in your hands if you want to carry a cup of hot soup from the galley on the fourth floor to the Mess on the floor below.

After years of rusty neglect, the on-board plumbing had only recently been repaired. Dr. Don't Know's Submarine still smelled slightly of old singed vegetables, but things were far, far worse before the repairs. As you can imagine, it was incredibly difficult to keep the vessel submerged for long periods without flushing toilets.

Dr. Don't Know's budget didn't stretch to creating his very own super villain's super office, and he was forced to convert an old storeroom. His desk was an old packing case and instead of the kind of super-deluxe office chair finished in white leather normally available to the world's criminal elite (complete with a long-haired purring cat), Dr. Don't Know has to make do with an old oil drum that hasn't had all of its rough edges properly smoothed with an angle grinder.

37. 'Other Transmissions'

The life of a super-criminal can be worrisome enough, especially considering the sort of financial difficulties that he had experienced recently, but even given all of this, Dr. Don't Know is a real worrier and now he had something new to really worry about.

The 'Other Transmissions' section of his recently-rationalized and now, in fact, one-man surveillance and monitoring team (who also has to man the main switchboard when he is not busy with any transmissions designated as 'other'), had just intercepted the conversation that took place between Falcon Boy and Ellis.

Hurried, worried questions exploded in the Doctor's brain like so many bursting bubbles of angry anger.

'How could Falcon Boy have made contact with anyone?

How was this made possible?

Who is responsible?'

Dr. Don't Know looked straight towards me when he had this thought. Luckily, he doesn't know that I'm there. He continued worrying.

'If Falcon Boy has suddenly acquired a superpower then has his foolish friend acquired one as well?

Is someone arbitrarily handing out superpowers to people?

If so, why won't someone give me one?

What sort of superpower do I want?

I had better think of one just in case. Would I choose falling like a stone but not breaking on impact?

Swimming like an unbidden fish?

Looming large over people?'

And the Doctor worried some more.

'Why a young girl?

What is she going to do next?

Do I have to kidnap her as well?

Who else has Falcon Boy spoken to?

Will I have to kidnap them as well?

What if he has spoken to lots of people?

What if I have to kidnap lots of people?

Where will I put them all?'

Just when it seemed that the poor Doctor's worries would engulf him completely, there was a knock at the door. Dr. Don't Know looked up to see the door to his 'office' being violently yanked open. After a brief struggle between man and hinge, one of the Doctor's few remaining scientists stepped inside. The scientist was wearing a white lab coat with a pocket full of pens.

'I have it here, Dr. Don't Know,' said the scientist excitedly. 'I have the picture you requested.'

The scientist handed an envelope to the super villain and even though the scientist's 'laboratory' – another converted storeroom – was only next-door to Dr. Don't Know's 'office', he had been unable to resist the urge to seal the envelope with a lick and a long piece of sticky tape.

Dr. Don't Know took the envelope and held it in front of him. After a couple of weak attempts to open the envelope with the nail of his little finger, the Doctor stopped. He handed it back to the excited scientist.

'But don't you want to see it?' asked the confused scientist. 'I thought that this was a Level One Code Red Ultimate Priority?'

The scientist waited for a response. Dr. Don't Know said nothing.

'This is the child that Falcon Boy was speaking to,' continued the scientist.

The Doctor remained impassive and, perhaps fearing being let go like so many of his colleagues, the scientist kept talking.

'Because we already knew the location of Falcon Boy, it was a relatively simple...'

The scientist stopped. 'If I make it sound too simple,' he said to himself, 'then it will sound like anybody could have done it. If anybody could have done it, then why would that anybody have to be me?' He started again.

'Because we already knew the location of Falcon Boy, that meant we were able to put in place an extremely sophisticated and wholly-scientific monitoring and tracing procedure made possible, not only through the dedication of your team, but also by utilizing a couple of highly complex and strictly classified logarithms, logarithms that are only known on a need to know basis.'

'That sounds much better,' thought the scientist. He continued again.

'To prevent these complex logarithms falling into the wrong hands, they have never been written down but are instead entrusted to the memory of an extremely indispensable member of your organization, namely myself.' The scientist placed his hand on his breast, so as to further emphasize his indispensability.

'I have them here, Doctor. I have them here.'

Dr. Don't Know still said nothing, and so the scientist continued continuing.

'The target's name is Ellis. Our last report indicates that she has now left the house shared by Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird and is headed for the Panic Town Stadium.' The scientist paused. 'We have got to stop her before it is too late!'

Dr. Don't Know didn't react so the scientist reacted for him.

'Putting aside for one moment the whole evil plan thing, I thought it was also worth me formally registering my complete and utter disgust that a young girl like this has been allowed to leave the family home unsupervised.' The scientist was angry now.

'Never in all my time as a professional have I ever known anything as unprofessional as this being allowed to happen.' Dr. Don't Know still said nothing. The scientist continued continuing his continuing.

'Whoever is responsible for letting this young child leave her family home and get caught up in all manner of world-threatening adventures should, at the very least, be named and shamed!'

The scientist slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand in that gesture so beloved by people who are looking for the physical equivalent of the grammatical violence of an exclamation mark.

!

'It may interest you to know,' the scientist continued, 'that if it were down to me, the person responsible for such irresponsibility would be

TARRED AND FEATHERED,

PURSUED AGGRESSIVELY TO THE VERY BOUNDS OF THE BAILIWICK,

HUNG BY THEIR HEELS OVER A VAT OF RANCID SOUP UNTIL THEY COUGHED UNCONTROLLABLY,

FORCED TO PUBLICLY CONFESS THEIR CRIMES ON TELEVISION,

SEVERELY CASTIGATED, SO MUCH SO THAT THE MERE POSSIBILITY OF ANY FUTURE CASTIGATION WOULD CAUSE THEM TO TREMBLE UNCONTROLLABLY,

DEALT WITH SILENTLY FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES,

MADE TO WALK BACKWARDS FOREVER,

PICKED OUT FOR THE REST OF THEIR DAYS BY A POWERFUL SPOTLIGHT.'

As you can see from the capital letters, the scientist feels very strongly about this.

'As you can see,' said the scientist to the Doctor, 'I feel very strongly about this.' Dr. Don't Know still said nothing.

'I can't help feeling,' concluded the scientist, 'that this poor innocent child has been deliberately made to leave the house in order to further the aims of someone who is constantly manipulating situations like this to simply suit themselves.' The scientist looked around.

'If I didn't know any better,' he said, 'I would swear that we are all simply characters in someone else's so-so story.'

Dr. Don't Know pressed a wobbly button on his desk that said 'Troublebot' and three of them appeared.

38. Everyone Loves a Robot

Everyone loves a robot and we have all enjoyed countless stories about impressive-sounding robots with wonderful names, all shiny and chrome and quick with witty one-liners and other typical science-fiction adventure banter designed to make everyone love the 'mechanical friend' forever more.

These are the kinds of robots in those kinds of stories that make their travelling companions laugh by making funny observations about whatever situation, sticky or otherwise, they find themselves in.

Along the way and in between the witty words, these kinds of robots are also able to solve a crisis or two. Put two robots together in the same story and you can also spend hours reveling in the robotic rhythms of their witty robotic repartee.

However, as Pearly Loses the Plot, Or Does She? demonstrates to us all, the relationship between humans and robots is not always a smooth and mutually progressive one.

A misguided investigation initiated by Pearly and the Interesting Twins leads to ninety-three employees of the First Fallstown Beneficial & Mutual Bank being mistakenly convicted of embezzling pension funds and imprisoned in the Fallstown Correctional Facility. It takes a lengthy legal campaign to get the convictions overturned and as a result of these hearings, Pearly is banned from ever investigating again.

'You need to go back to school like every other child your age,' says the presiding magistrate, the Right Honourable Judge Lambert Johnstone-Drury. 'Your investigating days are well and truly over.'

And seemingly they are. The Interesting Twins are separated and sent to three different foster homes. Pearly Stockwell becomes the latest and most unwilling boarder at the Fallstown Academy for Troublesome Children.

Everything they had worked so hard to achieve now appears to be over, but as luck would have it or, indeed, as is essential for any story to resolve the issues that it contains, or just so the writers can add excitement to an episode that is seemingly going nowhere, it just so happens that Fallstown suddenly becomes the focus of a visitation from outer space.

Pearly always had her suspicions about Professor Oswald Pipkin and his Space Observation Station, a project funded in perpetuity by the now-defunct University of Fallstown.

'How do we know that he isn't spending his days signaling to aliens from outer space and inviting them to colonize our planet?' she says to the Interesting Twins. 'I'm not really sure that all those years of scientific study are good for anyone. Besides,' she continues, 'there is something about all of those satellite dishes and telescopes that I just don't like.'

But the banking scandal intervened before she was able to act upon her suspicions and Professor Pipkin was able to go about his business unimpeded. For contacting an alien race and inviting them to take over the world is exactly what the deranged professor was planning, and with Pearly and her meddling friends out of the way, he was close to achieving his dream.

One night, Pearly is woken in her dormitory by the brightest of bright lights filling the sky.

'Bright lights at night aren't right,' she says to herself. 'I had better look into this.' And so she does. It was a simple task to rendezvous with the Interesting Twins, who all had similar thoughts about the bright lights and knew they should all be looking into what was happening.

The next morning, Fallstown has fallen captive to a race of extremely cruel, invisible and nameless aliens intent on using Fallstown as the site for something indescribably incomprehensible. Pearly and her detective friends watch from their secret hiding-place as the entire population of Fallstown is herded into the main square by Professor Pipkin.

'I knew it,' says Pearly. 'I just knew that Professor Pipkin had been warped and corrupted by all those years of reading.'

'Yeah,' says Wes menacingly. 'Just you wait until I box his silly scientist's ears. He won't know what's hit him when I whack him three ways backwards.' Wes punches his fist into his palm.

Once the plot had been revealed, it was a relatively simple task for the writers to allow Pearly to discover that the aliens were, in fact, being controlled by a special transmitter designed by the wicked professor.

'So this is what the real embezzlement of public funds looks like,' she says to herself when Wanderley, who had disguised himself as a bicycle courier with an important message for the professor that could only be delivered by hand, shows her the photographs he was able to take of the professor's Alien Contact and Control Transmitter. 'That needs smashing straight away,' she says.

'I'm on it,' says Wes, and he was. Wanderley disguises himself as a visiting professor 'who had heard about Professor Pipkin's genius and wanted to see for himself what all the fuss was about.' As 'Professor' Wanderley flatters the vain Professor Pipkin, Wes sneaks into the Control Room and takes a sledgehammer to the transmitter.

With the transmitter broken beyond repair, the cruel, invisible, and nameless aliens simply vanish, and it is an easy thing for Windy to race to notify the authorities of Professor's Pipkin's wrongdoings. The naughty professor is led away by the police to spend the rest of his days behind bars.

'There won't be any books or clever talk where he is going,' says Pearly to her friends. The following day Pearly Stockwell and the Invisible Twins receive an official apology, and Professor Pipkin's Space Observation Station is demolished and replaced by light industrial units.

This particular adventure tends to buck the more prosaic trends of all of the other Pearly Stockwell adventures, by ending with a flashback to an event that took place before the adventure began.

The flashback reveals that the Professor Pipkin who almost caused the world to be colonized by aliens was, in fact, a robot created by Professor Pipkin to replace himself.

'I'm very old now,' lamented Professor Pipkin, 'and my head can no longer cope with all this scientific stuff.' He looked down at the robotic version of himself lying dormant on his operating table.

'This way,' thought the warped Professor to himself, 'I will never get old again, and will be able to read books and do research forever.'

Unfortunately, there was a fault in the central processing unit and the 'new' Professor Pipkin considered the human race so inferior that he sold the entire planet to the highest bidder on an intergalactic auction website.

39. Troublebots are Always Trouble

If robots, treacherous or not, don't work for you then perhaps you would prefer a brain-searingly intelligent android. You know, the kind that is always philosophical in their outlook and vaguely sympathetic towards the plight of the obviously inferior human race that they are nevertheless duty-bound to serve without question.

Whilst androids like this might get a little agitated sometimes – and occasionally end up breaking things or themselves – they tend to calm down in the end and go back to adopting the role of the benevolent guardian. It is highly unlikely that they would ever sell the whole human race for scrap.

If an android doesn't really work for you, then you might be the kind of person who prefers synthetic people whose real tragedy is the fact that they will never be properly human, however hard they secretly pine and moon.

Despite their broken synthetic hearts, these artificial people still manage to nobly provide the world with an amazing service and are always seemingly at their happiest when they are doing complicated scientific things for little or no real reward in the face of very real danger.

At the danger of building you all up only to have to knock you all down, I am sorry to have to tell you that the robots in this story are the most irritating and hateful non-human things to ever trouble the pages of a story.

Troublebots were always trouble. They stood the tallish side of average and would look reasonably alright from a distance, were it not for the fact that they were usually scratched and dented.

Each Troublebot had two eyes, a dial where the nose should be and a small round hole for a mouth. Variations do exist within this format, and you couldn't be sure that the distance between the eyes is exactly the same on each head, or that each mouth was die-cut exactly in the centre of each face.

The upper body was square-like and hollow, with enough room inside for all of the various pistons, wheels, wires, switches, motors and circuit boards required to keep the Troublebot working.

There was also a rectangular grille on each Troublebot's chest and if you looked through the flimsy bars, you could see their badly-soldered inner circuitry sparking, shorting and generally threatening to give up.

The limbs of a Troublebot were designed with action in mind. Unfortunately, the measurements used for the prototype were very slightly out, and this mismeasurement was most noticeable in the slight limp caused by the right leg being ever-so-slightly longer than the left.

The left arm looked normal enough for a humanoid and ended in a metallic hand. The right arm ended with a bewildering array of random tools attached to it instead of fingers. These tools included useful ones like screwdrivers, mini-saws, sharp knives, small-bore guns, digital cameras, half-size samurai swords, and blow-torches.

Less useful tools that have been found at the end of a Troublebot's arm include sporks, pencil sharpeners, miniature golf clubs, thermometers, toffee hammers, fountain pens, litter grabbers, flag guns that say 'Bang', analogue remote-control systems, small kites on short strings, spirit-levels, kaleidoscopes, sextants, mascara brushes, wooden spoons, egg toppers, paper clips, microphones, Clingfilm dispensers, radio aerials, small fizzy sweet dispensers and a ruminator (whatever that is).

Anyone with an eye for the aesthetic, especially sensitive designers and engineers, is likely to find that same eye filling with tears at the simple sight of one of these hapless things.

Troublebots are not like any other kind of robot you have ever seen before. Were you to meet one, you might start feeling sorry for it but for the simple fact that their general down-at-heel-ness has made them extremely bad-tempered.

This is because that for all the reasons outlined above, and many more that I haven't even begun to mention, Troublebots are aware enough of their own inherent flawedness to be totally insecure and forever angry.

It is no wonder that Troublebots look like they are about to smash you in the mouth with a badly-clenched fist or stamp on your toes with an ill-fitting foot.

Troublebots are not even able to find any solidarity in their shoddiness. It isn't just the world and everyone in it that causes a Troublebot to lash out in frustration, they also find it impossible to get on with each other. Picture the following scenario:

Troublebot A leaves a leg out to trip Troublebot B while Troublebot B is trying to blindside Troublebot C and attach a magnetic rope round the ankles of Troublebot D.

While this is all happening Troublebot D is attempting to short-circuit Troublebot E with a long-handled screwdriver.

Meanwhile Troublebots F and G are holding Troublebot H out of a thirty-five-story window by its badly-fitted legs.

Ever alive to the possibility of a nice bit of roboticide, Troublebot I is poised to shove F and G out of the window, taking H with them.

Quite understandably, no one, not even Dr. Don't Know and he has had a small army of them manufactured, can stand to be in the same room as a Troublebot.

Troublebots are aware enough to know that nobody likes them, and the knowledge of this makes them even angrier.

Sadly however, Dr. Don't Know is saddled with them, as he had a job lot specially made at a discounted rate in a deserted foundry beneath an uncharted desert island, somewhere in a really small part of the Pacific Ocean where no one really goes much anymore. The terms of the contract were non-refundable.

Whether developed as a survival tool so as to avoid damage from each other, a means of hiding from each other with a view to causing the aforementioned damage, or simply as a mechanism by which they might curry some small sliver of favour with a world that clearly laments their very existence, it turns out that Troublebots are reasonably good at disguising themselves as humans.

Admittedly, any disguised Troublebot is best viewed in semi-darkness and from a reasonable distance in order for the disguise to be totally convincing. In the same way that any other species has needed to adapt in order to survive, the Troublebots have come to view the dark corridors and dimly-lit recesses of Dr. Don't Know's submarine as their natural habitat.

This adaptability is good news for the Troublebots but for everyone else, it is just another reason to detest their very existence, as every human on board Dr. Don't Know's Submarine spends all of their time worrying about bumping into one of these psychotic creatures.

Imagine you are a new member of the crew and you have been working a late shift, opening and closing valves in the Engine Room. With your shift over, you have to now hurry to the Mess to get your supper before the vending machines are turned off for the night.

The corridors are dimly lit and ahead of you on the stairwell, you see someone coming towards you. The last time this happened, you forgot to check properly and ran headlong into a Troublebot. It took you a good forty-five minutes to calm it down again and by the time you had placated the angry robot, you had missed your supper.

Troublebots exude a very faint odor of rusty oil and this time, you remember to do what they told you during your induction. You slowly approach the figure ahead of you and stop at a sensible distance in front of it. You sniff loudly and deeply three times in quick succession.

If you don't smell rusty oil, you make your apologies and keep moving. If you do smell rusty oil, you slowly back away to allow the Troublebot to pass without it molesting you in some way.

40. Troublebots Three

Three Troublebots separated themselves from the shadows in the corner of Dr.. Don't Know's office and stood before his desk. The scientist shuddered.

The first Troublebot snatched the envelope from the frightened scientist's hand and ripped it open with its can opener attachment.

Using a tweezer attachment, the second Troublebot clumsily removed the photograph of Ellis from the envelope. The third Troublebot had no role to play in this part of the proceedings, and so satisfied itself by waiting for the right moment to strike.

The three Troublebots peered, pored and pawed the photograph of Ellis and as they did so, you could hear a horrendous racket as the gears in their computer-brains whirred and clanked. Dr. Don't Know and the scientist waited for something to happen and eventually something did.

The third Troublebot snatched the photograph from the second Troublebot's hand.

'I will stop her,' it said, and the Troublebot's voice reminded the wary scientist of a telephone being dropped down a toilet mid-conversation.

The second Troublebot reacted by swatting the third with the back of its metallic hand.

'I will catch her,' it said, in a voice that sounded like the final gasp of a dying microwave.

The first Troublebot moved slightly behind the other two and with a swift sweep of its rusty arms, crashed their two heads together. Over the clang of two metal heads being forced violently together, the first Troublebot spoke and as it did so, the scientist thought it sounded like an old transistor radio being thrown out of the window of a slow-moving car.

'I will bring her here,' it said.

In a scary flash of oil, sparks and robotic resentment, the Troublebots left the office.

41. Here is the Plan

Remember the Queue? All that gloomy-sounding stuff you read about in the first few pages? About things not working? About the world not spinning properly anymore? That stuff that sounded like the beginning of the best film that has never been made (yet)? Now is the time for you to know more about what has been going on.

In case you haven't guessed by now – and even if you have – Dr. Don't Know is planning to use Doodah's homecoming concert to cause a whole world of trouble for the world. Disguised Troublebots have joined the hundreds of people who are helping to set up the concert, and even as we speak are putting the finishing touches to Dr. Don't Know's terrible plan.

Here is the plan in full:

1. Dr. Don't Know has kidnapped Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird and hidden them in a special soundproof and lightproof container lorry parked in the stadium. He has left them enough food and drink for a week. Working on the principle that stolen letters are probably best hidden in plain sight, Dr. Don't Know feels very confident that nobody will think to look for them so close to the scene of the big crime he is about to commit. (Obviously, he's not so confident now.)

2. Disguised Troublebots have infiltrated all aspects of the preparations for Doodah's concert, including some disguised as backing dancers. They've filled the stadium with special paralyzing voice-activated audio super-hertz mega-bombs connected to the stadium's sound system.

3. Four Troublebots will kidnap Doodah, tie them up and keep them somewhere out of the way. With the band out of the way, the four Troublebots will then go on stage disguised as Doodah.

4. As the show reaches its finale and the introduction to One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good begins, Dr. Don't Know will appear on stage via a hidden trapdoor and use a secret code word to activate the special paralyzing voice-activated audio super-hertz mega-bombs.

5. The special paralyzing voice-activated audio super-hertz mega-bombs will detonate and paralyze everyone in the stadium, as well as the rest of the world as it watches via satellite and the Internet. The whole world will be paralyzed for exactly nineteen hours, forty-three minutes and thirteen seconds.

6. With the whole world unable to move, Dr. Don't Know's army of Troublebots will then steal the answer to every single question that has ever been asked in every single language around the world. Answers to questions that have yet to be asked will also be stolen.

7. The stolen answers will be encrypted and filed away on a special miniature planet hidden just behind the Moon. Dr. Don't Know has had this planet built especially for this purpose, and even though the building of this planet was one of the many reasons why his criminal empire has now been drastically downsized, once the world reawakens, no one, not even scientists and people with telescopes, will be able to find it.

8. When the world wakes up, it will be a very different place. Nobody will remember the answer to any of the questions that have been asked since the world began.

9. From then on until the end of infinity, the only way to find the answer to anything will be via a new ticketing and appointment service overseen by Dr. Don't Know. This will make him the most important person in the Universe, full stop. Exclamation mark!

10. The new rules are self-explanatory. You fill out the required form in triplicate, ensuring that you adhere to the one question per person guidelines. Any question containing six words or more will be instantly deleted by the system. Each family member must fill out a separate form. Only one question per application is admissible. Should you wish to know the answer to something else, you will need to make a separate application.

11. Once submitted, your application will be processed and provided that all the appropriate criteria are met, you will eventually be allocated an appointment. You are advised to arrive well ahead of your allocated appointment time as you can expect significant delays due to lengthy queuing times and probable staff shortages due to inevitable cost-cutting activities.

12. You arrive at your designated queuing station and begin to queue. You queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue and queue.

13. An extremely significant and lengthy period of time later, in some cases whole lifetimes, you are stunned to find yourself at the front of the queue. A small sealed booth with a single door is there. The door opens automatically and you step inside. You see a three-legged stool and a speaking tube attached to the wall.

14. Your moment has finally arrived. You sit on the stool. You lean forward. You ask your question into the tube. You make sure that you speak slowly and clearly because any inaudible questions will not be answered. You can expect a small delay following the asking of your question. Eventually, a badly-recorded voice will simply say 'Don't Know'.

15. At no point during this process will any discussion be entered into regarding any elements of the process. If you wish to discuss your concerns in relation to the process, or any part of it herein, then you should do so in writing via a separate online system.

It doesn't take a doctor, dentist or dinner lady to tell you that the world is well and truly doomed.

42. When Toyshops Attack

Conveniently for Ellis, and especially conveniently for me, Panic Town Municipal Stadium is right next to the park and, conveniently again for all concerned, the entrance can be found just behind Falcon Boy's house.

This means that Ellis was already in the vicinity and irrespective of which option you chose to get her to the park in the first place, it at least allowed her the opportunity to look for Falcon Boy without me, or you, needing to rely upon another creaky plot device.

'You need to get to into the stadium and try to find out what is going on,' said Falcon Boy. 'I fear that Dr. Don't Know is planning something rotten for the concert this evening.'

'Okay,' said Ellis, 'I'm on my way.'

Ellis walked with the confidence of a child who has suddenly acquired a special purpose for the day, and she felt just like Pearly Stockwell in When Toyshops Attack.

Much to the delight of everyone, a new toyshop had opened in Fallstown.

'I can't wait,' says Windy to his brothers. 'I can't think of anything better than spending some time browsing in a toyshop.'

'Better than catching a criminal?' Wes snorts. 'The only toy I like is a cricket bat and that is only because they are good for whacking crooks.'

'I once disguised myself as a giant teddy bear and hid in a toyshop for two weeks,' says Wanderley.

'We know,' say Wes and Windy, laughing together. 'We were the poor fools who had to try and find you.'

'I'll think you'll find it was me who actually found him,' Pearly corrects the brothers. 'It was also me who revealed the truth about Blinko the Balloon Magician and his plot to flood the magic accessories market with cheap foreign imports.'

'We know,' sigh all three of the Interesting Twins together.

All of this happens, of course, in Pearly Squares the Magic Circle. Blinko turns out to be in the pay of Export International, a nefarious multinational company intent on dominating global markets through skullduggery, lies and blackmail.

One of their shadowy operatives had convinced poor old gullible Worcester Knudsen, a retired civil servant now barely scraping a living as Blinko the Balloon Magician, that his bookings would treble if he used a new brand of super-modelling inflatables.

Needless to say, Pearly eventually gets to the bottom of the goings-on and Worcester receives a four-year prison sentence for his part in the plot. As always happens, in real life and in stories like this, Export International could not be sufficiently implicated in the scandal and is allowed to continue its financial finagling for another day.

On the day of the toyshop opening, Fallstown is stunned to discover that the only things on its shelves are thousands and thousands of tiny toy helicopters.

After some clumsy plot exposition involving a new employee at the Fallstown Telephone Exchange and a pair of open windows, it is eventually revealed that the shop's proprietors, Kurt and Irena Flue, are a husband and wife spy team, hell-bent on using Fallstown as a launch pad for their hundred-thousand-strong toy helicopter fleet.

During a daring raid on the warehouse at the back of the shop, the Interesting Twins are captured and Pearly has to rely upon her native wit and big city sense to free them and save the country from being destroyed by the fleet of tiny toys. Needless to say, she succeeds. Ellis felt sure that she was going to do something similar.

43. Everything Seems Too Much

The pass that Ellis found gave her unlimited access to all areas of the stadium. Showtime was rapidly approaching and everyone was so busy that no one really paid too much attention to a young girl wandering around on her own.

Hundreds of people swarmed backstage, some pushing boxes on wheels, others telling those pushing the boxes where to push them. Other people were up ladders, fixing things.

Up on the stage, she could see technicians straightening microphone stands and taping their cables safely to the floor. Ellis saw that most people were walking normally but every now and then, someone would be limping as they went about their business.

Television crews were also setting up, and Ellis could see large cameras being moved into position, ready to transmit tonight's concert all around the world. Ellis walked past a giant mixing desk with more buttons and dials than she had ever seen before in her life.

There was so much going on that Ellis began to feel overwhelmed by the enormity of her task. When you don't know where to start looking for something you know you really need to find, it can be a very overwhelming thing. Everything seems too much and nowhere seems like the right place to begin. This is how Ellis was beginning to feel.

'Mind out, kid,' someone shouted as they dragged a trolley past.

'Go home to your Mum and Dad,' said a long-haired man wearing a baseball cap and carrying a clipboard. 'This is adult pop stuff.'

'If you are not part of the crew or one of the acts, I need you to vacate this area immediately,' said a big, broad man with 'Security' written on his t-shirt.

'If you want an autograph, you need to apply via the website,' said a harassed-looking lady with a telephone in each hand.

Tired, scared, and beginning to wish she hadn't been quite so brave in the first place, Ellis found a quiet corner backstage and sat down next to a massive lorry. She felt like crying.

44. Uncertainty is an Uncertain Thing

Despite her usual self-assurance, a similar thing once happened to Pearly Stockwell in Pearly and the Harvest Moon. A mysterious meteor shower just happens to brainwash the whole of Fallstown. Pearly wakes the next morning to find that she was the only person who hadn't been turned into an emotionless shell of her former self.

Pearly walks through the streets of Fallstown, desperately trying not to show emotion as she seeks to determine the cause of the shower. She feels alone in the world and it isn't a nice feeling. Everyone looks so blank and dull. They smile, but Pearly can't see anything behind their eyes.

Even despite the fact that the blank dullness that now confronts Pearly is not too much different from how the town had been before, Pearly still realizes that things need to be returned to how they used to be.

Eventually, as always, Pearly triumphs, by remembering that the autumnal equinox was rapidly approaching. This allows her to realize that the rays of the next harvest moon would be strong enough to reverse the effects of the meteor shower and as she does so, her feelings of complete and utter aloneness are banished once again.

'I'm not alone anymore,' says Pearly as the moon's rays begin to work their magic on the townsfolk of Fallstown and they return to the people that they had been before.

As she remembered this story, Ellis was able to take some comfort from it but what did she know about rays from the moon and meteor showers? More importantly, how would any of this help her find Falcon Boy?

We have all felt occasionally, or more regularly than that, that the world is full of more questions than answers. Indeed, if Dr. Don't Know gets his way, then this is exactly what the future is going to look like for all of us.

Uncertainty is an uncertain thing and causes us all to be unsure about how we feel about things sometimes. We start to worry about who we are, and what we really mean and matter to a world that seems too busy to really care about us at all.

Sometimes this uncertainty can make us feel uncertain for far longer than a simple while, and this was exactly how Ellis was feeling right now. As many of you have perhaps also experienced, feeling uncertain also colours how we feel about the future.

'What is going to happen to Panic Town if I don't find Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird?' Ellis said to herself. 'Will everyone blame me if things turn out really badly for everyone?' Her poor small heart began to sink.

Ellis wasn't the only one feeling worried right now. I am very concerned about putting a young girl in such a terrible position. I'm also making her feel these really big and bad-feeling feelings.

Perhaps I should have left her happily at home? Are people going to start blaming me for how she is feeling? Now I'm starting to worry. It's getting contagious.

What do I really matter to a world that might be too busy to really care about me? Should I be feeling these bad-feeling feelings? Is there anybody out there even reading this? Is there anybody out there who will ever read this?

With both of us now overwhelmed by a glimpse of our smallness in the vastness of such a giant world, I feel really bad.

I thought that this would just be a lovely adventure for Ellis. I thought she would see some funny things and meet some lovely people, before going home to her lovely life. But now look what has happened. There isn't much that's lovely about having to save the world from impending doom.

Instead of evil super-criminals and angry robots, perhaps Ellis should be having great fun with talking ducklings and cuddly kittens before going for a small walk down a country lane with an overly-protective sheepdog called Wayne, and then heading home for a jolly tea of apples, cake and milk, lovingly prepared by a kindly farmer's wife called Mrs. Bess.

What do you think?

I think we need someone to do something very quickly to dispel all this doom and gloom and make Ellis feel better about herself, her situation and her position in relation to the world. But not just for Ellis. I would like to feel better about things as well.

If this is going to happen, then it had better happen straight away before we are all too depressed to continue reading (or writing).

45. 'What do you want me to say?'

'What's the matter?' whispered Falcon Boy, as if he suddenly knew that he needed to reach out to Ellis and reassure her at this particular moment in time. 'Why are you worrying about where you stand in relation to a seemingly indifferent world?' He paused reassuringly. 'You do know that none of this is your fault?'

Ellis was about to reply when she stopped herself. Aside from the indifferent world thing – which hadn't really occurred to her – she was very impressed that Falcon Boy knew exactly how she was feeling even though he didn't know anything about her.

Somehow, and she wasn't really sure how (but perhaps it was directly related to a gift for 'empathy' that Falcon Boy believed he had suddenly and mysteriously acquired), it felt like Falcon Boy was much closer to Ellis than when he had been speaking to her earlier. She thought for a second.

'You sound like you are bit closer to me than when we were speaking earlier,' she said.

'I'm like that,' said Falcon Boy proudly but mistakenly. 'I seem to have suddenly and wonderfully acquired a real knack for feeling how people are really feeling.'

Ellis shook her head.

'That's not what I meant,' she said.

Falcon Boy suddenly felt less proud.

'Oh,' he said, feeling slightly deflated. 'You mean you don't think I'm somehow closer to you emotionally now?'

Ellis wasn't really sure what Falcon Boy was talking about. She thought he sounded confused.

'Say something else but say something different,' she said, looking up.

'Why?' asked Falcon Boy

Ellis looked around.

'Keep talking,' she told the superhero. Ellis had the feeling that Falcon Boy was very close.

'What do you want me to say?'

'Doesn't matter,' Ellis replied. 'Just keep talking.'

'Should I tell a joke?' asked Falcon Boy hopefully.

'I don't mind,' said Ellis recklessly. 'Do whatever you like. Just keep talking.'

And so Falcon Boy cleared his throat and told Ellis one of his favourite made-up jokes of all time.

46. 'What are you doing, Mr. Frog?'

I warn you in advance that Falcon Boy may be reasonably good at some things, reasonable at other things and useless at other other things, but he is neither reasonably good nor reasonable at making up jokes, concocting riddles or telling them. He is simply useless.

Falcon Boy cleared his throat and though no one could see him, he still felt self-conscious enough to make sure that he was smiling. Presentation is always everything.

'There was a frog sitting on a stone, washing his trousers in the pond. A goldfish swam by.'

Falcon Boy paused. This would normally be the point when whoever he was telling the joke to would start shifting uncomfortably, looking at their watch and mumble something about catching a bus. When none of these things happened, Falcon Boy continued.

''What are you doing, Mr. Frog?' asked the goldfish.

'What does it look like?' answered the frog.

A little later on, the same goldfish swam by again.

'What are you doing, Mr. Frog?' asked the goldfish.

'What does it look like?' answered the frog.

The goldfish swam past several more times and each time, he asked the same question. Each time, the frog gave the same answer.

Eventually the frog got so annoyed that he stopped doing what he was doing and waited for the goldfish to swim past again. Sure enough, he didn't have to wait long and this time it was the frog who asked the question.

'Why do you keep asking me the same question each time you swim past?' asked the frog.

'I don't,' said the goldfish and swam away.'

All the while Falcon Boy had been telling his joke, Ellis tried to use the sound of his voice to tell her where he was hidden but the joke and its punch line made her stop still in her tracks.

'I don't get it,' she told Falcon Boy. 'I don't get the joke.'

Falcon Boy laughed triumphantly and Ellis suddenly wished that she had just kept quiet. Falcon Boy interpreted Ellis's response as a desire for more.

'Perhaps you'll get this one,' he said excitedly. 'What cheese do you use to hide a horse? Mascarpone. Why did the fish cry? Because the seaweed. How many women do you find in a monastery? Nun.'

Falcon Boy was warming to the task. 'What about a riddle?' he asked. 'If it takes a week to walk a fortnight, how many apples in a barrel of pears? I have three legs standing and four legs sitting. How many legs do I have when I go to sleep?

A green bean, a red ball and a yellow bicycle are in a blue bucket. Which one is broken? When I went to bed, I was the oldest man in the world. When I woke up, I wasn't. What happened? Three men. One spade. Two holes. Discuss. I'm equal to, but not less than. I'm in and around, but not under. I'm about and between, but not nearly enough. How close am I?'

'Enough!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' cried Ellis, echoing the thoughts of the entire planet, past, present and future. 'I don't need to hear any more.'

You probably feel the same way as Ellis. People say that laughter is the best medicine but these people haven't heard what we have just heard. Jokes as bad as these are likely to make people ill, not make them feel better.

Falcon Boy laughed loud, long and heartily. The kind of laugh that is just so infuriating that anyone laughing this way should be fired into space strapped to a rocket, marooned on a desert island, forced to knock on every door in Panic Town to apologize in person, or be sprayed bright red with irremovable paint as a permanent reminder of how irritating their laugh really is.

47. 'Do you want another one?

When he had finished laughing, Falcon Boy started explaining the joke to Ellis.

'Goldfish have really short memories,' he said, 'so every time the goldfish swam past the frog, it forgot that it had already asked the question. This is why it asked the same question again and again.' Falcon Boy paused to let the 'profundity' of his joke sink in.

'This is also why,' he continued, 'when the frog asked the goldfish why did it keep asking the same question over and over again, the goldfish said that it didn't. It couldn't remember that it had.'

'But it's not funny,' protested Ellis accurately.

'You didn't say you wanted a funny joke,' said Falcon Boy with equal accuracy. 'You asked for a joke. You didn't say it had to be funny.'

'And it wasn't,' replied Ellis, wishing she had kept her silly mouth shut.

'Don't worry,' declared Falcon Boy, delighted to have an audience. 'There's plenty more where that came from. Do you want another one?'

'No, thank you very much,' said Ellis rather too quickly. 'I don't think I need you to say anything else just now.' She stopped. 'I think I know where you are.'

48. 'Where is 'here'?'

And she did.

Ellis had stopped next to the lorry. It was an ordinary articulated lorry that had been parked up like all of the other ordinary articulated lorries that had been parked up backstage. Nothing about it was in any way suspicious, but somehow it still seemed different.

'This is where Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird have been hidden,' she suddenly realised.

'And – I – have – found –them!'

The relief flooded through her like a rush from the sort of sugary drink that she was never allowed to drink.

'I – have – found –them!'

Ellis looked around, expecting something horrible to happen, like a booby-trapped spring with a boxing glove on it, a very loud and scary alarm complete with spinning, flashing lights, or an enormous arrow made of light bulbs pointing straight at her head. She waited but nothing happened.

'I have found you,' she whispered to Falcon Boy. 'I know where you both are.'

'Where?' asked Falcon Boy excitedly. 'Where have you found us?'

'Here,' exclaimed Ellis, excitedly. 'I have found you both here.'

'Where is 'here'?' asked Falcon Boy plaintively.

'Here is where,' replied Ellis triumphantly. 'That is where here is.'

And then she realised that Falcon Boy didn't know where here was. It was her turn to talk slowly and carefully.

'You are both imprisoned inside an articulated lorry, backstage at the Doodah concert. I am standing outside the lorry talking to you.'

Ellis looked over her shoulder, still convinced that something bad was about to happen.

'I need to get you out straight away,' she said.

'Jumping Jupiter!' exclaimed Falcon Boy, as if the discovery had been his to discover. 'We are trapped inside this lorry.'

After all the fuss generated by the kidnapping, and the build-up regarding the end of the world, it was a simple thing to free the two superheroes.

Climbing a ladder that had been left carelessly leaning against the back of the lorry, Ellis was able to reach the handle that opened the back door of the container. The handle wasn't very stiff and Ellis didn't have to pull too hard to get it moving.

'I am going to open the door,' said Ellis. 'Can you two lean on the door from the inside and help?'

'Yes,' Falcon Boy replied animatedly. 'Come on, Bewilder Bird. I told you that I would get you out of this mess.'

With Ellis pulling the door handle and the superheroes pushing from inside, the door opened very quickly. Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird fell forwards, tumbled from their prison and landed in a heap on the ground.

'I've found you both,' Ellis shouted excitedly. 'I've found you both!'

Ellis climbed down the ladder and did a victory jig, and the sadness and aloneness that she had just been feeling now gave way to a wonderfully wonderful wave of triumph that washed right over her.

'I found you, I found you, I've only gone and found you,' she sang.

'I found you, I found you,

I've only gone and found you.

I found you, I found you,

I've only gone and found you.'

49. Falcon Boy's 'extraordinary things'

Having been stuck in the back of the lorry for some time, our two favourite superheroes looked even more crumpled than they normally do.

Falcon Boy was not much taller than Ellis. He was still wearing his beak-hat-mask and a yellow t-shirt with the feather logo surrounding his initials. His trousers were covered in dust and his stout hiking boots were in need of a polish. When Ellis looked closely, she could see the beginnings of a moustache growing on his top lip.

There was nothing about Falcon Boy that would cause anyone to think that he was capable of much, really, let alone saving the world. As Falcon Boy would tell you himself, albeit rather too grandly, he was just an ordinary person who had taken it upon himself 'to be doing extraordinary things'.

Actually, as we are all aware, Falcon Boy's 'extraordinary things' so far don't amount to much more than rescuing an elderly gardener from a tough of toughs. Since then, his career had been more of a matter of being seen than actually being seen to be doing things, extraordinary or otherwise.

This means that the sole justification for his continued existence is the perfect example of Panic Town's fascination with celebrities. It is more a case of him being in the right place at the right time that created the whole mythology that now surrounds him than it was him dazzling the world with daring feats of derring-do.

If you follow the logic of this argument, then you might further consider the possibility that his subsequent kidnapping by Dr. Don't Know was actually because he was in the right place and the wrong place at both the right time and the wrong time, at the same time. However, you probably don't need to follow the logic of this argument too closely. It will likely hurt your head.

Whether rightly or wrongly, it is a simple statement of fact that Falcon Boy, just like we decided with Ellis earlier, had been imbued with an extraordinariness that perhaps he might not have been imbued with, were he not central to this particular story.

50. Bewilder Bird Suits his Name Superbly

Where does this leave Bewilder Bird?

We should probably see Bewilder Bird as a bonus. He embodies the living, breathing realization of the Buy-One-Get-One-Free principle that generates nine-tenths of all the transactions in the Panic Town Shopping Centre and Retail Park.

I'm not being cruel when I say this. The simple fact of these paragraphs is more than enough to demonstrate that just like his friend, but possibly for a slightly different reason, Bewilder Bird has still been imbued with the same kind of extraordinariness as his partner.

Bewilder Bird suits his name perfectly. Take his boots, for example. They were designed to look like a bird's foot but a simple error with the measurements he sent to the mail order company meant that when they arrived in the post, the talons were slightly too long. This makes it very hard for him to run properly whilst wearing them.

I know what you are thinking. He should have sent them back straight away. This is easy to say but Bewilder Bird, like a lot of us, found that the whole sending-things-back-thing can seem like too much trouble.

First, you need to speak to someone and explain the problem. If they accept that the problem is one that they are prepared to deal with – and Bewilder Bird couldn't be sure whether the mistake with the measurements was his or not – then you need to pack the product back up again and take it to the nearest post office. Then, you then have to wait to see if the company are happy with the condition of the returned product and happy to issue a refund. If they aren't, then you will need to enter into more correspondence and possibly eventually need to speak to an ombudsman and/or have the whole issue settled in the small claims court. The whole thing just seemed like too much trouble for Bewilder Bird to bother.

Furthermore, whilst he was deciding what sort of superhero he was going to be, Bewilder Bird took the decision to be the strong and silent type and vowed that no one would ever hear his voice. A vow of this magnitude would necessarily exclude making telephone calls to mail order companies so Bewilder Bird decided to keep the boots.

For some people, the fact that Bewilder Bird never speaks is seen as a sign of his strength. For others, myself included, this silence makes things very awkward when you bump into him on the streets of Panic Town.

Just like the boots, but with more success measurement-wise, Bewilder Bird's outfit had also been custom-made and consists of a red superhero bodysuit with the letters 'BB' sewn onto a golden shield on his chest. This is worn with a long golden cloak that is tattered at the edges. A simple golden handkerchief covers half his face.

51. '... falling into apocryphal disarray'

As the two superheroes lay blinking in the light, Ellis thought they both looked slightly lost. Falcon Boy stood up, dusted himself down and offered a gauntleted hand for Ellis to shake.

'Ellis, on behalf of ourselves, the town, the surrounding area, the country, the globe and the entire solar system, we would like to thank you very much for rescuing us.'

Falcon Boy thought that the time was right for him to sound dignified.

'Indeed,' he continued gravely, 'I would like to think that your rescuing us will somehow be pivotal in preventing the universe from losing its long-established and fundamental equilibrium, and thereby falling into apocryphal disarray.'

Ellis wasn't really sure what he was talking about and hoped that he wasn't about to tell another joke. Falcon Boy was on a roll now.

'Bewilder Bird and I are both convinced that Dr. Don't Know is up to absolutely no good, and that our being kidnapped is just the start of some kind of cunning and despicably malevolent master-plan to cause extensive chaos, wreak real havoc and generally make everything not very nice.'

Falcon Boy finished speaking. Bewilder Bird nodded his agreement with Falcon Boy's assessment of the situation.

Ellis wasn't one for making snap judgements about people. She preferred to take her time and get to know them. Her initial impressions of the men were reasonably favourable but she did find herself feeling surprised at the sight of Falcon Boy suddenly standing stock-still like an old, wonky statue while Bewilder Bird flexed his biceps.

52. I Really Love the Rebel Robot MCs

Backstage, Doodah were busy preparing for their homecoming concert. They were due on stage at eight o'clock, following the support act, the Rebel Robot MCs, who were on stage even as we speak. And here is one of the biggest problems I have had with the telling of this story.

I really, really, really love the Rebel Robot MCs. Or Dalton Akimbo, Burlington Turner and Pascoe Wellesley as they are known to their friends, family and uber-fans like me.

I love their raps and their rhymes. I adore their beats and their breaks. I truly believe that they can already take their place alongside real legends like Reddy Freddie and the Go Getters, L'il Little, DJ Soporific, the Rhyme and Reason Riddim Wranglers, and not forgetting Kaptin Kreu-Ton.

The Doodah support slot is a massive coup for the Rebel Robot MCs and ideally, I would be extolling you all with tales of how they are getting down and getting on with their latest breakiological beatapollooza.

Unfortunately, however, for legally binding contractual reasons related to their having been recently snapped up by the Fuzzy Cola© Corporation, I am only allowed to tell you about the first 5 seconds of their performance.

This is because, as I have been reliably informed by the Fuzzy Cola© Corporation's top legal experts, the rights to all the present, past and future performances relating to the Rebel Robot MCs:

'whether real or imagined; recorded, described, discussed, considered, imagineered or in any other way, shape or form made to seem real or partially real to one or more person; commented upon, reviewed, articulated and/or in any other way captured or in any way placed within the popular and/or any other variation of that mental state known as imagination' now belong to the Fuzzy Cola© Corporation 'in perpetuity ad infinitum and forever more.'

If this wasn't enough, and clearly it is, this same contract also prevents me from telling you anything about what they might or might not be wearing (even though, for example, I also know that they have just signed an exclusive outfitting contract with OneStripe Sportswear™).

Nor, for fear of full and fearsome legal action, the kind that could likely bankrupt a small nation, am I allowed to give you any indication of what tracks they are performing, whether they have any new material or, indeed, whether or not they are planning to spontaneously ad lib over any breaks that they might or might not include in their set.

Also, I cannot say anything about any aspect of the lighting, dancing, catering, or whether or not they are pleased with the way that their musical career has turned out.

I'm sorry but under the terms imposed by Fuzzy Cola© Corporation, I am only allowed to write the following approved paragraph.

'Good evening Panic Town,' said Nuclear Boy, DJ Slo-Mo and R-Man together. 'We are the Rebel Robot MCs...'

So, anyway, and in order that nothing I say, do or write will further incur the wrath of the Fuzzy Cola© Corporation's lawyers, let's focus on Doodah and see how they are getting on.

53. Loving Us, Loving You (again)

Even though she wouldn't be too sure of the word itself, Deirdre was supremely confident that she had designed the best stage costumes ever.

Doodah will start the show dressed as electric scarecrows on stilts. The straw sticking out of their sleeves and hats will pulse different fluorescent colours in time to the music.

Doodah's sixteen backing dancers will be dressed as tie-dye unicorns complete with horns that spin and fire thick blue laser beams into the night sky. These laser beams will interact to wondrous kaleidoscopic effect with the trillions of metallic snowflakes that will be dropped onto the concert by an armada of low-flying heavy bombers, leased by the record company especially for the purpose.

To prevent any unfortunate incidents, Panic Town and its immediate vicinity had been designated as a no-fly zone for the next three and a half hours and all aircraft had been re-routed. Squadrons of casual employees from the Panic Town Zoo have spent the last two months relocating indigenous sea birds in preparation for the concert.

To ensure smooth continuity, Doodah will already be wearing their next costume change underneath their scarecrow outfits and as the lights dim in the buildup to the Loving Us, Loving You medley, Doodah will reappear as tin foil monkeys complete with fuse wire fur and pogo sticks for tails.

Deirdre had planned for Doodah to bounce across the stage in the same pattern that a bee makes when it is collecting pollen. As they do so, their long-suffering backing dancers, now dressed as funky toadstools complete with pink polythene mushroom caps and grass-coloured clogs, will complete the spectacle by hurling scoopfuls of rubber honey into the audience.

Imagine trying to sing the chorus to Loving Us, Loving You whilst bouncing around on a pogo stick. In fact, just imagine trying to sing the chorus to Loving Us, Loving You. It goes like this:

We're loving us loving you

We're loving giving what we do

To you

When we're loving what we're giving

That's when we know you're really living

Because

We're loving us loving you

We're loving giving what we do

To you

And when the night is lonely

and your poor life just keeps getting poorer

Just think of us

And you will adore

What we do

When

We're loving us loving you

We're loving giving what we do

To you

We're loving us loving you

We're loving giving what we do

To you

When we're loving what we're giving

That's when we know you're really living

Because

We're loving us loving you

We're loving giving what we do

To you...

See what I mean? I don't know about you, but if I ever meet the person responsible for writing these lyrics, I am going to find it very hard not to say something extremely rude to them.

As if the excitement wasn't already more than enough, for their grand finale, Doodah will be sucked upwards into a mini candy-floss whirlwind and vanish from the stage to be replaced by radio-controlled miniature versions of themselves dressed as space pirates.

Like true artists and designers everywhere, Deirdre was very specific with her team.

'It is the tiny details that can make or break a show,' she reminded them. 'So, pay attention.'

'I want wooden legs made of metal,' she continued, 'and pirate eye-patches complete with miniature windscreen wipers.' Deirdre's team nodded, some more enthusiastically than others.

'Finally,' she said finally, 'I want the parrots on our shoulders to look like disco cockatoos.'

A series of mirrors and lenses will make these miniature versions of Doodah appear full size to the audience. The real Doodah will be backstage operating their miniature avatars by radio control.

Finally, just as the opening bars of One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good begin, Doodah are going to be fired back onto the stage by four cannons made to look like the claws of an enormous bear.

This is really going to be some kind of show.

54. 'We are Panic Town's favourite superheroes'

Doodah were relaxing backstage in their dressing room when the door burst open and Ellis, Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird rushed inside.

'Attention all colleagues and bystanders,' gushed Falcon Boy, with his chest puffed out and his gauntlets placed firmly on his hips, 'we are Panic Town's favourite superheroes, here to save you all from being unwitting pawns in a horrendously evil plan formulated by that master of menace, Dr. Don't Know. I have reason to believe that he is planning to use your concert as the excuse for committing some terrible crime.'

Davey Doodah looked down from his stilts.

'Pardon?' he said in that annoying way that some people have of pretending they didn't hear what you said, when everyone knows that they did and are only saying this be annoying. Falcon Boy didn't understand.

'I mean that we are here to be the ones who help by stopping you...'

'Are you?' interrupted Davey. The same principle as before also applies to this phrase.

'Yes, I am Falcon Boy and...'

'You are,' said Davey annoyingly again, with the emphasis on the 'are', enjoying the game he was playing.

Falcon Boy was ready to speak again when Deirdre angrily interrupted him.

'I specifically requested that all backing dancers be dressed as tie-dye unicorns for the opening number,' she huffed angrily. 'I said nothing about scruffy masks, tattered capes and annoying-looking children.'

I couldn't tell you who the most irritating member of the most irritating band in the universe is, but there are times when you need look no further than Deirdre Doodah for your answer.

'Who are you and what do you want?' she demanded haughtily. 'We are Doodah and we don't have time for our fans just now.'

Deirdre considered smiling but couldn't quite manage it. The best she could do was not growl.

'Could you please all leave straight away?' she said through gritted teeth. 'If you are really lucky, then maybe one day you might be fortunate enough to win a competition to meet one of our assistants. Until then, I must ask you all too please go away now before I have you removed.'

'But...' said Falcon Boy, despite everything that had just been said and the look of real hatred dawning on Deirdre's face.

'Leave...' said Deirdre, her hackle well and truly up now.

'Please...' pleaded Falcon Boy pleadingly, and here we now find ourselves in a very difficult situation.

It is one thing to admire someone for something, as perhaps we are admiring Falcon Boy here for behaving himself in the face of such obvious and stupid ruditity. However, the question of admiration becomes slightly complicated when you realize that the someone you thought was to be admired is now beginning to sound desperate. No one likes to hear the sound of desperation in someone's voice, especially if that someone is a superhero. It sends out the wrong message.

'Now!' shouted Deirdre, and any pretence she might have been struggling to maintain regarding her true feelings had now gone, replaced by a brazen, tooth-bared, person-hating hostility.

'You...' choked Falcon Boy.

'Bye.'

'Dr....'

'Don't!'

'No!!!'

Ellis found herself getting very angry as well. Some of Ellis's anger was the normal, ordinary anger that anyone would feel when witnessing such out and out bad manners from someone who really should know a lot better. However, the main source of Ellis's anger here was derived from the complete and utter stupidity of the situation.

Ellis stood on a chair before clearing her throat and shouting louder than she had ever shouted before.

'Stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at her.

55. Lady Sago Hargreaves

Towards the end of Pearly Stockwell and the Fate of the Fête, the good people of Fallstown are locked in an unhappy debate about who is really responsible for the disappearance of the refreshments tent so kindly donated by the Fallstown Mothers' Union.

'I was really looking forward to one of those scones,' says Captain Andrew McAndrew, Founder, President, Secretary and Treasurer of the Fallstown Fellows, and it isn't long before everyone starts arguing.

Pearly is very concerned. Wanderley had disguised himself as the man who ran the coconut shy but so far he has nothing to report. Wes is waiting for someone to need a hard shove or perhaps a punch. Windy is standing by, ready to run really fast.

'We are not going to get anywhere like this,' Pearly says to herself. 'I need to do something and quick.' So she stands on a chair and shouts 'Shut Up' at the top of her voice.

Now, whether it was the volume or the rudeness and for some people it probably was both, Pearly's shouting has the desired effect and it eventually leads to the unmasking of Lady Sago Hargreaves as the villainess.

It doesn't take long for Pearly to realize that Lady Hargreaves isn't actually a lady at all, in either sense of the word. 'She' is, in fact, a certain Lenny Lonaghan who, following a very little bit of detective work and a very lot of simply listening at keyholes, is, in the words of Captain McAndrew, a 'blasted chancer' who thought that he could 'get in with' Fallstown's polite society with a view to then possibly stealing things from people's homes or, if that wasn't possible, at least break a few things when no one was looking.

Thwarted in his plans of getting in with the 'proper' people of Fallstown when he discovers that nobody is friendly enough to invite him to their houses, Lenny decides to take his revenge at the annual Fallstown Fête by burning down the refreshment tent and all it contains.

'They were other people's cakes,' says Pearly sternly, wagging her finger at the defrocked arsonist as Wes holds him in a vicious-looking headlock and Windy comes running back up the hill with the police puffing and panting behind him.

Ellis had always thought that when the time came, she would stand on a chair and shout really loud to get people's attention. As she had already discovered to her cost, it doesn't work at home but as you can see here, when done in the right place it can be extremely effective.

56. Ellis Gets Everyone's Attention

Ellis got everyone's attention.

'This is great,' she thought. 'Every time I do something today, it feels a little bit more like I'm a hero in my own story.'

Ellis climbed down from the chair and started to explain everything that had happened so far to Doodah. Which was not an easy thing to do.

To begin with, Davey started with his 'Pardons?' and 'Are yous?' again.

'And then I heard Falcon Boy's voice,' said Ellis.

'Pardon?' said Davey.

'Falcon Boy,' said Ellis, pointing at Falcon Boy.

'Are you?' said Davey.

Falcon Boy went to say something. Ellis put her hand on his arm. She smiled.

'Pop stars like you have lots of big jobs to do,' Ellis said pointedly.

'Do we?' sniggered Davey. 'Really big jobs?'

Donny sniggered as well.

'You do,' said Ellis unperturbed, 'and do you know what your biggest job of all is?'

Davey was sniggering too much to answer. He shook his head.

'Your biggest job is to inspire all the children in the world to be the very best they can possibly ever be and not,' said Ellis firmly, 'to be as stupid and annoying as you are being now.'

Davey stopped sniggering. Donny didn't but Davey shot him a fierce look.

'She's right, you know,' said Deirdre, suitably stung on behalf of global pop stars everywhere by the image that Davey was currently projecting. 'Will you both please just pack it in and listen to what she has to say?'

'Pardon?' Davey couldn't resist one more. Deirdre looked fierce enough to eat the pop star whole; bones, boots and all.

'Sorry Deirdre,' said Davey and Donny together. 'Sorry Ellis.'

When Ellis had finished telling Doodah about her rescuing Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird, everybody wondered what to do next. Surprisingly, or not, depending on how you view what she was about to say, it was Daphne who spoke first.

'Why don't we all just go home?' she suggested. 'If we all leave very, very quietly and no one ever ever tells him, Dr. Don't Know might never, never know until it is way, way too late, and even when he does maybe someday find out, it will be way, way too, too late anyway because nobody will even really be here to even start to tell him, because everybody will have already gone home.'

Let's pause for a second. Ellis was only saying a minute ago that global pop stars have a responsibility to set good examples to their fans and now we have one of the biggest stars in the world saying something as stupid as this.

How does Daphne's last outburst make you feel? Angry? Confused? Disappointed? Scared?

How does it make me feel? A little bit weepy, bordering on fearful. Remember, I only had to type it out. I can't even begin to imagine how you must be feeling right now. You were the poor person who had read the offending paragraph, either out loud to someone else, or even to yourself. Sorry.

I'm pretty sure that Ellis felt the same way we do. She was only at the start of her lifelong engagement with language, but Ellis simply couldn't believe that anyone would be capable of saying something like this, let alone saying it out loud.

Donny was next to react. He shook his head but not in disbelief at what Daphne had just uttered. Donny didn't want to go home. Donny wanted to stay and see what Dr. Don't Know had in mind.

Donny liked action and secretly thought that if he wasn't Doodah's drummer, he might like a job in what he called the 'secret super-agent mystery murder spy business'.

The thing Donny had always liked the least about being in Doodah was having to dress up in silly outfits, so he certainly had no plans to become a costumed superhero.

Now he was in the same room as Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird, he was even more convinced that costumes and capes were not for him. Donny fancied something much more 'secret and science-y', like spying, listening to telephones all day long or manning a twenty-four-hour closed-circuit television camera for twenty-four hours a day.

'You must get to see so much,' he said to himself, 'and you would have plenty of time to see it all.'

Deirdre simply thought that the show should simply go on.

'The show should simply go on,' she simply said, and that was all she had to say on the subject.

She was right, of course, and nothing more needed to be said on the subject, but it might have been better for the sake of the story if she could have thought of a bit more to say on the subject. It would certainly give us all a better sense of her character. Then again, perhaps the fact that she doesn't have too much to say is revealing enough in its own way.

I guess it is right when people say that celebrities can be strange and mysterious people. I was going to say something about being ordinary and extraordinary and the alleged paradox that this duality creates, but we've been down this road before. I'm not sure we need to go down it again.

I guess it is also right when other people say that celebrities can be stupid and shallow and have nothing to say. It is also fair to say that you don't need to be a celebrity to be strange or mysterious or stupid and shallow and have nothing to say.

All of this is fine and fair and exactly how we would expect the world to be turning, but I do think that it is also true to say that this particular story does appear to have a very high percentage of celebrities who are strange and mysterious and stupid and shallow and have nothing to say. You can decide for yourself whether this is a good or a bad thing.

57. Ellis Says What to Do

As everyone stood and stared at each other, Ellis decided that the best thing to do was for Doodah to act as if nothing unusual was about to happen. The show couldn't be cancelled. Even despite Daphne's suggestion, everybody couldn't simply go home because then Dr. Don't Know would know that something was up and he might never be caught.

'This means,' said Ellis, 'that you must all act normally and keep singing no matter what you see or hear.'

She turned to Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird.

'You two should be in the crowd and ready to pounce at the first sign of trouble. I will be backstage trying to find out what is going on.'

Having stood in silence for a while now and very keen to play a larger part in the exciting events unfolding around him, Falcon Boy stepped forward and Bewilder Bird stood beside him. They both puffed out their chests. Falcon Boy cleared his throat.

'We want you all to know how safe you are going to be with the two of us keeping watch and having our eyes open for any movement made by Dr. Don't Know or any of his mindless minions, so we don't want any of you to worry whatsoever as every outcome, incident and eventuality will be covered by and accounted for by the heroic two of us.'

It's happening again with the whole horrendous mangled language thing. I thought that Daphne's speech was bad enough, and now this from Falcon Boy. Things are going from bad to worse. The problem is that characters in stories need to say things to each other, even things as bad as these. This wouldn't be much of a story if everyone was as silent as Bewilder Bird, but it might make it easier to read.

I guess for the sake of the rest of the story, we will have to accept the fact that this sort of thing is probably going to happen again. If this is the case, then what we need to do is try and find the good in every bad thing.

In the case of Daphne, the best thing we can take from her outburst is comfort in the fact that she normally doesn't use this many words when she speaks and so is unlikely to do so ever again. It just isn't like her. As for Falcon Boy, at least he sounded a bit more confident than he had done previously. And that's a good thing, isn't it?

Nobody replied and for a brief moment, Ellis feared that Davey would start teasing Falcon Boy again, but he just shrugged and said, 'Whatever, man,' and started fiddling with a spare pogo-stick tail he found leaning against a table.

That's another good thing.
58. Ready for Anything?

With everyone in place and ready for anything that Dr. Don't Know could possibly throw at them, Ellis went backstage to try and figure out exactly what the evil criminal was planning to do.

Previously, when she was still looking for Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird, Ellis had found the backstage area to be too busy and too difficult to explore properly.

I'm certain that the uncertainty of the situation was certainly a contributing factor to her own uncertainty, but now that things were a bit more certain, it is certainly fair to say that Ellis was feeling a bit more certain about herself and how certain things were going, even if she wasn't certain yet what the world could expect from a certain Dr. Don't Know.

With Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird now free to fight crime once more, and with her responsible for their freedom, Ellis was beginning to feel more and more like it was her actions that were causing some kind of story to unfold. All of this made her feel better about things now.

'I'm feeling better about things now,' she said to herself but being a sensible girl, Ellis didn't want to get too carried away here.

'I don't want to get too carried away here,' she thought. 'Everything could change in the blink of an eye.'

And like all sensible people everywhere, Ellis was right, apart from one thing. Things in this book are not likely to change in the blink of an eye, more like the turn of a page.

With the show already underway, backstage was calmer now, with fewer people running around looking harassed. Previously, Ellis had felt that she was getting in the way of people. Now, she only had to get out of the way once, when two roadies carefully and deliberately placed a full drum kit next to a pile of flight cases.

'I'm not sure why,' said the first roadie, 'but this seems like just the right place to place this drum kit.' The roadie was wearing a dark black t-shirt with The Woebetides stencilled in silver cobwebby letters.

'I told you it was a waste of time setting it up in the first place,' said the second roadie. His black shirt didn't have any writing on it and you could see the top of his pants peeping over the waistband of his dirty jeans. 'I could have told you that no one was going to need it on-stage.'

'You say that,' said the first roadie, 'but it was definitely worth it just to see the look on that Donny's face when he thought he was going to have to play it.' The roadie chuckled. 'I don't think I've ever seen anyone go that white in the face before.'

'Never mind,' said the second roadie. 'Let's just leave the whole thing here and not even bother dismantling it properly.' He paused for dramatic effect and looked off into the distance. 'I am absolutely, completely, totally, utterly and wholeheartedly one hundred thousand per cent certain that nobody else is going to even notice this drum kit this evening, let alone find something useful to do with it.'

He laughed.

'I'm sure that it will be forgotten about just about as quickly as we both are.
59. Pearly Breaks a Leg

Backstage is one of the favourite places in adventure books for adventures to happen, and it should come as no surprise to any of you that a perfect example of the kind of backstage adventure I am describing would have to be Pearly Breaks a Leg, the one where Pearly and the Incredible Twins are forced to investigate the Fallstown Players, a new amateur dramatics society that Pearly suspects is up to something nefarious.

The story begins with Pearly wondering aloud to herself why it was that there wasn't more theatrical activity in Fallstown.

'Why isn't there more theatrical activity in this tiny little town?' Pearly asks herself. 'Where is all the romance and all the drama?'

Pearly puts her hands on her hips dramatically.

'If I had more time, I would start a dramatic acting club and we would give free performances to bedridden old people and children in institutions.'

'Pearly sweeps her hand dramatically onto her forehead,' says the caption that accompanies this frame in the comic book.

No sooner has Pearly finished speaking when a leaflet drops through her letterbox. Her first thought is to chase the culprit down the road and remind them of the 'No Leaflets or Circulars or Scroungers' notice that she had written in thick marker pen and nailed to her front door.

Her second impulse is to send Windy racing for the police as fast as his little legs would carry him, but he was not back from the dentist yet. Pearly read the leaflet.

'Are you interested in Drama? So are we!

Want to know more? Join the Fallstown Players!'

'What a coincidence,' thinks Pearly, placing her hand dramatically on her chin in a ponderous, theatrical way. 'How could anyone have had any idea about what I was thinking at this particular moment in time?'

How, indeed?

For a very brief moment, Pearly longs to join but almost immediately, her big city suspiciousness takes over and puts a stop to her yearning.

'Just who are these people,' she wonders, 'and what do they really think they know about the arts, dramatic or otherwise? What makes them think that Fallstown even needs a drama society?' She snorts. 'This isn't really the town for that sort of thing.'

In the usual comic book way, one thing leads to another and leads to another and another and another and then one more – like the comforting turn of a well-oiled narrative cog – and it isn't long before Wanderley disguises himself and his brothers as amateur dramatists and they go along to find out more.

To begin, it appears that everything is normal, but it isn't long before the flamboyant ways of Octavio Octavious start to arouse suspicion among the young detectives.

'There's more to that man than meets the eye,' reports Wanderley to Pearly. 'He loves to use really long words while waving his arms around.'

'That's not all,' says Wes gruffly. 'I checked out his flat while he was at rehearsals.' He whispers conspiratorially. 'Full of books, it was. Full of them, I tell you.'

'Good work, lads,' says Pearly. 'I knew there was a chance that something fishy might be going on.'

But nothing fishy was really going on. In fact, nothing much of anything was really happening here, and the struggle beating at the dramatic heart of Pearly Breaks a Leg was more about the writers looking for inspiration than it was about the detective friends solving another mystery.

Pearly almost accuses Octavio Octavious of something but doesn't in the end, and a lot of time in the story is taken up with people getting up to things backstage whilst rehearsing for a show that never happens.

Pearly Breaks a Leg ends with Octavio Octavious leaving town due to a lack of interest in setting up the Fallstown Players.

'We have enough drama already,' said Captain McAndrew dramatically, 'without someone deliberately creating more.'

'But,' as Pearly tells the police when they arrive at his recently-vacated flat, 'at least it means that we can all relax, secure in the knowledge that the Fallstown Players was not going to be used as a possible front for a criminal gang of actors and actresses intent on maybe causing artistic chaos with their dramatic ways. You can never be too careful.'

Pearly pauses dramatically.

'It also means that Windy didn't run all that way to warn you for no reason.' Pearly smiles her pearly smile and exits stage left. The out-of-breath policemen nod as they turn to head back down the hill again. As they pass Windy, both policemen pat his head with an equal parts mixture of affection and annoyance.

The final caption for this particularly uninspired and muddled episode of the Pearly Stockwell series cryptically declares:

'A prevented crime is a better crime than a crime solved, because a crime solved means a crime was committed in the first place and therefore wasn't prevented.'

Ellis had puzzled over this cryptic bit of strangled prose ever since she first read it.

'So to prevent a crime, I need to find a crime and prevent it before it becomes a crime,' puzzled Ellis as she wandered backstage looking for a crime to prevent before it became a crime.

When wrestling with complexities of this kind and deep in puzzling thought, it can sometimes be hard to see where you are going, and so it was that Ellis bumped into something. The something she bumped into was very solid and very metal and it very hurt her arm.

'Oww!' she exclaimed, looking up to find that she had bumped into one of Doodah's dancers caught by a zip in a cargo net.
60. The Trapped Unicorn

'Are you alright?' Ellis asked. The unicorn looked slightly lost and confused. 'Do you need some help with that zip?'

The unicorn didn't answer. It was tugging frantically. Ellis thought there was a very faint whiff of oil in the air.

'Please let me help,' said Ellis. 'I'm very good with zips. My Mum lets me help her with hers all the time.'

The unicorn shook its head and kept tugging.

'Come on,' said Ellis. 'I promise I won't rip your outfit.' The unicorn shook its head again. Ellis stretched out her hand to try and help free the zip.

'Don't be frightened,' said Ellis. 'I'm only trying to help.'

The trapped unicorn flinched and managed to free itself from the cargo net but in doing so, also managed to hurl itself backwards and crash into the conveniently abandoned drum kit. The sound of the crash was horrendous and, in case you hadn't already guessed, suspiciously metallic in its clang.

CCCCLLLLLAAAAAAANNNNNGGGGGGG!!!

'Help!' shouted Ellis to anyone who would listen. 'I think I've found something important.'

'Bash you,' said a metallic voice from inside the unicorn's head. 'Bash you into tiny painful pieces.'

The Troublebot – for anyone who still hasn't worked it out – struggled to its feet and as it did so, Ellis tried to move away, only to find that she was now suddenly, and inconveniently for her but conveniently for me, stuck in the narrow space between two large flight cases. She was trapped and as the metal menace took a clumsy step towards her, Ellis could now really smell the oil.

'Help!' she shouted. 'Somebody help me!'

The Troublebot took another step closer and Ellis started to feel very frightened. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what Pearly Stockwell would do in a situation like this.

Sadly, however, the writers of Pearly Stockwell hadn't yet got around to pitching her and her detective friends against evil robots disguised as backing dancers so Ellis had no real frame of reference for the situation she now found herself in.

Ellis knew she was in trouble but she didn't know that she was confronting a Troublebot. How could she? She had never been told about them. She also didn't know that this Troublebot was one of the three sent by Dr. Don't Know to stop her. Again, how could she know this? All Ellis knew is that the ugly-looking robot lumbering towards was very badly made and extremely angry-looking.

The Troublebot stopped right in front of her and bent down. Its face was so close to Ellis that she could hear the computer in its head whirring and slipping. Both of its eyes clicked independently as they struggled to focus. Troublebots don't breathe but if they did, then this one's breath would be thick and foul and oily and get caught in Ellis's nostrils.

'Bash you now,' said the Troublebot in a low voice that sounded something like either a hoarse whisper or a long-distance telephone call. 'Bash you all to bits now.'

Just out of sight, Ellis could hear a grinding sound as the Troublebot started to sort through the attachments on its hand to find the most suitable one for bashing.

Ellis gulped, and I have to say that things don't look too good here. The Troublebot took a rusty step back to give itself more room and as it did so, Ellis closed her eyes. The Troublebot lifted an arm but just as it was about to strike, Ellis heard someone shout 'Jumping Jupiter, we'll have none of that nonsense round here!'

Ellis opened her eyes to see Falcon Boy crown the Troublebot with a drum stool he had conveniently found. With a glorious THWAAKKKK! the stool connected with the Troublebot's forehead and down went the poorly-made metal imitation of a man.

Bewilder Bird was right behind his feathered friend holding a cymbal stand.

'Take that, you badly-soldered brute!' shouted Falcon Boy as he went at the Troublebot with the drum stool. 'No one threatens anyone around here unless it is us doing the threatening!' Bewilder Bird nodded his head in total agreement and joined in with the cymbal stand.

CLANG! CRASH! KAPOW!!!!!!!!!

'The grille!' shouted Falcon Boy. 'You've got to open their grille. You can only stop a Troublebot by opening the grille on its chest and jamming their workings.'

How on earth does Falcon Boy know this? With everything happening right now, I haven't got time to tell you but if I get a chance, I will tell you later. If I don't get a chance, then maybe you can decide for yourselves how Falcon Boy came by this information.

Bewilder Bird dropped the cymbal stand, threw himself on top of the Troublebot and started wrestling with it. Troublebots are pretty strong, but are not at their best when laying flat on their back. Battling with one arm to stop the flailing Troublebot from dislodging him, Bewilder Bird eventually managed to pry open the grille.

Falcon Boy approached the Troublebot with his drum stool. With a shrug and a shove, and also a very real disregard for his own personal safety, Falcon Boy rammed the metal leg of the stool into the Troublebot's inner workings. A shower of sparks erupted from the Troublebot's chest and soared into the air like a fancy firework.

The Troublebot stopped struggling and started short-circuiting instead. Bewilder Bird leapt up as the mortally wounded man-like machine twitched and smoked and arced on the floor. Luckily for him, the one good thing about his boots was the fact that they were rubber-soled. Otherwise things might have gone far worse than anyone would have liked.

Falcon Boy, on the other hand, was not so lucky. His boots had some kind of artificial soles. Falcon Boy found himself fused to the dying Troublebot.

'Falcon Boy!' screamed Ellis. 'You've got to let go! It's going to explode!' And she was right. The Troublebot was about to explode.

'I can't,' squealed the superhero. 'I can't let go.' The electrical charge that powered the Troublebot had shorted up through the metal leg and Falcon Boy's hands were stuck fast. Oblivious to all this panic and consternation, the Troublebot went about dying in a noisy and sparky way.

'Jumping Jupiter!' screamed Falcon Boy as the Troublebot exploded in a horrendous flash of thick, oily, sparky smoke.
61. The End of All Things Ever

It's over. End. Of. The. Road. The Line. The Story. The Trilogy. The Film. Action Figure. Lunch Box. Duvet Cover. Video Game. Fast Food Endorsements. Chat Shows. Award Ceremonies. The. End. Of. All. Things. Ever. Falcon Boy is no more.

He is gone. Missing in action. Vanished in a puff of grimy, oily smoke. Consumed by a conflagration. Farewell Clayton Candlegrease. Au revoir to the small man with the big dreams. Adios to the hairy top lip. We will never now see that moustache in full bloom. Goodbye. Thanks for everything. And nothing (really). It truly has been emotional.

O, most-lamented hero of the super kind. Your type will never be known again. You, who were the rarest and noblest of breeds. Gone before your time. Because the soles of your boots were not rubber.

His family will be getting a telegram. A phone call. An email. A headline in the local newspaper. A mention on the news. I can picture Juniper Jarvis now.

'Hi everyone, my name is Juniper Jarvis and I'm reporting live for 123 Celebrity News.'

She turns so that the stadium is behind her.

'The big news today is the death of that much-loved superhero Falcon Boy, who sacrificed himself to save the lives of his friends, Ellis and Bewilder Bird, and by doing so also saved the whole planet as well.' Juniper turns to Bewilder Bird who is standing next to her.

'I am joined by Bewilder Bird, who was there when his friend and co-hero passed away.'

Juniper has to hold the microphone higher than usual because Bewilder Bird is so tall. She smiles.

'So, Bewilder Bird. Perhaps you could tell us what happened?'

Bewilder Bird doesn't answer.

Okay, so I'm losing the run of myself here, but Falcon Boy's demise really is a huge loss to the world. Or at least the world I've created. If not the world, then at least the story because, if you think about it, what am I going to do now?

With Falcon Boy now dead, then so dies the story as well. How can I possibly be writing a book called Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird versus Dr. Don't Know in a Battle for All the Life of all the Planets when we no longer have a Falcon Boy?

I'm sorry if this is disappointing. You have read the story this far with what, I can only imagine, must have been a great deal of patience, persistence and perseverance.

I'm also guessing the journey has not been an easy one, what with the more than occasional lapses in sentence construction, not to mention some of the far greater crimes committed with narrative construction and the over-liberal use of coincidence for the sake of convenience.

How do you think I feel? Perhaps we would have been better off with Bewilder Bird as the lead character. He's bigger and stronger than Falcon Boy and as we have just seen, hasn't died in the battle with the Troublebot. To think that I have wasted two years of my life putting this story together, only to find that the central character isn't strong enough to survive.

What am I going to do about the other two books I am planning? I already have the first drafts of those complete. I really don't have the heart to begin all over again with another superhero and another friend and another villain with another evil plan and another resourceful child saving another foolish world from more total and utter destruction.

You were probably even beginning to think that Falcon Boy and his friends were going to successfully thwart the evil plans of Dr. Don't Know. It doesn't matter now, as Falcon Boy's careless use of a drum stool as a weapon had caused an enormous explosion, which buried him and the Troublebot he was fighting beneath a huge pile of broken masonry, flight cases, ceiling and other general bits of broken backstage stuff.

One of the Troublebot's badly-designed legs was sticking out of the rubble and, were you able to focus on anything other than the complete and utter tragedy of the situation, you would probably remark upon the fact that, from a design perspective, the explosion had somewhat improved the ergonomic line of the robot's leg.
62. On With the Sadness

Ellis had started to cry. How could she not? Everything was ruined now, and all of the braveness she had been feeling had now left her all at once. Her tears were large and heavy and salty. They fell from her face like the sprinklings for the saddest cake ever baked. I'm going to start as well in a minute.

Ellis wanted her Mum. She wanted her Dad. Ellis wanted everything to be exactly how it had been before she set off to rescue Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird. She didn't want to be standing backstage at a Doodah concert, staring at a large pile of rubble with a dead superhero beneath it.

There were many things that Ellis didn't know, but the one thing I think she was pretty sure about right now, is that she really didn't want to know anything about people she knows dying.

Normally, we would look for parallels of Ellis's experiences with those of Pearly Stockwell, but on this occasion, the child detective's adventures haven't yet caused her to stare Death directly in the face.

Pearly is an orphan, as the captions say at the start of every adventure, but her parents died when she was three weeks old and so she never knew them. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, depending on how much regard you hold the various writers of the Pearly Stockwell series in, nothing else is ever said about her parents and aside from the fact of her inheritance, this aspect of Pearly is never ever explored. (This may well change, of course, as the editorial team responsible for the Pearly Stockwell series tend to have a very high turnover and the franchise is in continual need of reinvention).

Those of you who have read the series for yourselves will know that the writers tend to prefer to keep people alive for what often seem like solely spiteful reasons, and many is the time that you find yourself thinking that perhaps the death of a particular character would prevent them from having to face the kind of humiliation that a gifted but fictional child detective is always capable of dishing out.

Anyway, on with the sadness.

Bewilder Bird sobbed silently but violently. His large shoulders heaved up and down as the tide of his grief washed over him like a stormy sea. To begin with, he picked and pawed at the pile of rubble, dislodging a brick here and bit of plaster there, but clearly nothing was going to move and so he gave up and was now just standing and sobbing and staring.

When this book is made into a film, this will be the moment when the camera pulls back to show us Ellis and Bewilder Bird standing on either side of the same frame with the pile of rubble in the middle of them. And when we see this set-up we, like the critics who will review this film once it is released, and review it favourably, will understand that we are watching the two friends united in their loss of Falcon Boy but separated by their grief.

At this moment, we also have to understand that without Falcon Boy, there was no longer any reason for Ellis to be here alone with a grown man wearing a badly-fitting superhero outfit with a foolish pair of bird-claw-boots that always trip him up.

By the same token, of course, without his foolish friend with the hairy top lip and the crazy dreams, there was no reason for Bewilder Bird to be standing in front of a pile of rubble with a young child who had somehow been allowed to escape the attentions of her parents.

63. Someone Else Begins to Cry

Ellis carried on crying. Her crying bubbled upwards in great gushing jags that showed no sign of stopping. If I don't do something very soon, she is likely to faint from her grief and that is not going to make anyone feel any better. Here goes nothing.

Someone placed a hand on Ellis's shoulder. She was too upset to turn around.

'What's the matter?' asked the someone behind Ellis. 'Why are you crying?'

Ellis was so upset, she couldn't reply. She just carried on crying. Were you standing behind Ellis at this point, you would see Bewilder Bird's shoulders shaking as he was consumed by his silent grief. Touched by the sadness of the scene, the someone standing behind Ellis started to cry as well.

'Looks like something terrible has happened here,' sobbed the someone. 'Something really bad.' The same someone sobbed some more. 'Whatever are we going to do now?'

The someone behind her sounded familiar. A thought stirred deep within Ellis, an idea beyond her grief. She turned around.

Falcon Boy's shirt was singed, and ripped beneath the left armpit. His left trouser leg was scorched at the cuff, and Ellis could see a hairy leg through the hole in the knee. The visible parts of his face were blackened from the blast, and his tears had streaked watery little lines through the dirt. A fat lip made his moustache look wider.

'You're okay,' sobbed Ellis. 'You're okay.'

She was stunned. Bewilder Bird turned as well. He would have been lost for words if only words were his thing.

'Of course,' lisped Falcon Boy through his fat lip. He pointed at the pile of rubble, 'but someone else doesn't look so good right now.'

'We thought that you were under there,' said Ellis. 'We thought that you were dead.' She started sobbing again. 'I'm pleased you're not.'

'So am I,' smiled Falcon Boy sheepishly. 'I don't remember much, but I'm guessing that in one of those very lucky story-saving-type things that only happen in certain kinds of adventures, I was somehow thrown clear when the Troublebot exploded.'

Bewilder Bird stopped sobbing. He stood and stared at Falcon Boy. Falcon Boy stared back. Bewilder Bird smiled. Falcon Boy smiled. At this point, it felt as if the whole world had paused for a very brief second and then this feeling was over before it had even begun and our two superheroes high-fived each other and started their celebratory posing once again.

'Stop!' shouted Ellis. 'We don't have time for that now.' The superheroes stopped celebrating. 'Listen,' continued Ellis, 'that Troublebot thing was disguised as one of Doodah's backing dancers.'

She looked down at the Troublebot to see that it had now finished convulsing. 'This must be part of Dr. Don't Know's terrible plan.' She shivered slightly and as she paused, Falcon Boy couldn't resist flexing his biceps in his friend's direction. Bewilder Bird found it impossible not to giggle.

'We haven't got time for tomfoolery,' said Ellis. Both superheroes were giggling now. 'I think we had better get back to Doodah's dressing room before something else happens.'

64. Back From the Dead

With Falcon Boy back from the dead, everything was now go-go-go again. The smirk on his face was a mile wide and he couldn't stop jabbing his larger friend on the bicep.

'Back from the dead, eh?' he said. 'Now that's a story for heroes if I ever heard one.'

Obviously, Bewilder Bird didn't reply. Ellis turned around.

'Come on,' she said to the friends, 'we've got to find Doodah straight away.' The trio set off.

'If only we had our very own Windy,' Ellis wished to herself. 'I could send him running for the authorities while we wait here.'

Just before they reached the dressing room, the three friends bumped into the Rebel Robot MCs who had just finished their set.

Sadly, however, due to the profoundly punitive reporting restrictions laid down by the Fuzzy Cola© Corporation, not only am I not allowed to tell you anything about what they did during their performance, I am also not allowed to tell you anything about what they did for 'no less than one hour after any performance'.

I am allowed to tell you that Ellis was really pleased to see them. I can also tell you that she wanted to have her picture taken with DJ Slo-Mo, her favourite of the three rappers, but was not allowed to, due to the fact that 'no unauthorized recording equipment or related technology, whether audio, visual, audio-visual or indeed any other technology or technique not yet invented but capable of analogue and/or digital capture were it to be conceived, considered and/or invented, is allowed within three metres of the Rebel Robot MCs, either singly, in a group, or in any other combination thereof.'

So that was that then.

The friends arrived at Doodah's dressing room to find a security guard standing outside, holding a clipboard. The guard wore a baseball cap with the peak pulled down over its face. He was also wearing a fluorescent tabard with 'SIKURETY' stenciled on it.

'That's not how you spell 'security',' said Ellis. She went to open the door to the dressing room.

'No entry, Miss,' said the guard menacingly. 'Doodah cannot be disturbed.' The guard put his gloved hand on Ellis's head.

'That's a heavy hand,' thought Ellis.

'Get out of my way,' exclaimed Falcon Boy. 'I am Falcon Boy and I am here on official world-saving business.'

Bewilder Bird stood next to him.

'This is my disaster-averting colleague, Bewilder Bird, and we must both be afforded every co-operation by yourself and anyone else we meet in the execution of our duties.'

Falcon Boy stood as tall as he could in front of the guard.

'I have also just come back from the dead, so kindly step aside and let us heroes take control of the situation.'

'I don't care,' said the guard. 'Even if your name is Ronny Rocket Chops and you are planning on painting the whole planet pink, you are definitely not down on my list and therefore you are not allowed in to see the band.'

'But you haven't even checked your guest list,' countered Falcon Boy, still with the wind in his sails, 'so how do you know I am not allowed in?'

'I don't need to know,' said the guard, 'because I do know and I know you're not.'

Now, we all know that Falcon Boy is sometimes left to one side by public displays of logic and reason, but on this occasion, even he wasn't entirely convinced by the guard's argument.

'Let me see,' he said, attempting to snatch the clipboard from the guard's hand.

'Stop that!' shouted the guard. A tussle ensued. As the guard and the superhero grabbed at each other and the clipboard, Ellis heard a tremendous RIIIIIIIIIIIP!!! One of the guard's sleeves was ripped clean off to reveal a rusting metal arm.

'Not another one!' groaned Falcon Boy and Ellis together.

'Crush you all!' declared the now-revealed malevolent menacing metal maniacal monster.
65. Trouble for the Troublebot

Bewilder Bird was the first to act. He pinned the Troublebot to the wall with his shoulder. Ellis was next. She pushed an abandoned flight case as hard as she could against the robot's legs. Bewilder Bird jumped out of the way and the Troublebot was trapped. The Troublebot couldn't reach far enough with its arms to grab Ellis.

We will never truly know if the Troublebot's inability to grab Ellis was due to a flaw in the design and construction process. However, no one involved in the design process, it appears, visualized a situation when a Troublebot might need arms long enough to grab a child in order to prevent itself from being pinned to a wall by a discarded flight case.

Whether or not the problem here was one of human error, flaws in the design process, or shoddy market research and product testing, the Troublebot now found itself in very real trouble.

With a shout and a swoop, Falcon Boy leapt onto the crate and started jabbing at the robot with a mop he had found. Ellis kept pushing and pretty soon the Troublebot's logic circuits were close to collapse. It couldn't work out what to do to escape.

Should it grab the small child pushing the crate? Or smash its fist into the face of the annoying man with the hairy top lip? The Troublebot couldn't decide and ended up doing neither. It was Bewilder Bird who made the decision for it.

Dancing like a boxer trying to find an opening, Bewilder Bird got a little too light on his feet and his boots got tangled. With a slip and a cry he fell forwards, knocking Ellis and the flight case out of his way. This was all the advantage that the Troublebot needed and with a blood-curdling groan from its straining motor-pistons, it launched itself at Bewilder Bird, pinning him to the ground.

With all of its weight placed firmly on Bewilder Bird's chest, the Troublebot began to decide which one of its finger-tool attachments it would need to take out this meddling superhero. The tin opener, the serrated scissors, the compass and the toothpick were quickly rejected in favour of the hole punch and stapler attachment and so the struggle began.

Would the Troublebot manage to hole punch and then staple Bewilder Bird to within an inch of his life? Would the helpless superhero manage to break free from the deadly vice-like grip of his metallic foe? What about our hero's friends? Will they react in time to save the day? Or is Bewilder Bird doomed?

If this was an adventure you were watching on the television or reading in a comic book, you would be advised to tune in next time or wait until the next edition to find out what will happen. However, this is the book that the television programme and comic book series will be based on, so you won't have as long to wait. I will tell you now.

With the smallest of run-ups and a minimum of back lift, Falcon Boy hurled himself feet-first at the Troublebot's head. The Troublebot rolled across the corridor and managed to staple its finger to its own ear.

This was another situation that the Troublebot had not been programmed to react to and so it was forced to pause while its brain-computer furiously tried to figure out a solution.

'Careful,' shouted Ellis, 'it's thinking what to do next.'

The Troublebot got to its badly-designed feet. Bewilder Bird (just about) managed to foot-sweep the Troublebot and it crashed to the floor again. Falcon Boy grabbed a fire extinguisher.

'Think about this,' he shouted as he emptied its contents into the Troublebot's chest. This time, the shower of sparks flew from the Troublebot's chest like a shower of sparks and the robot died noisily on the floor.

'That was close,' said Falcon Boy as he and Bewilder Bird high-fived each other.

'Here we go again,' thought Ellis as she sat on the edge of the crate and waited for the two of them to get bored.

66. Donny Goes Missing

While Falcon Boy, Ellis and Bewilder Bird were busy battling the Troublebot, Doodah were having troubles of their own. It was now only minutes before show time and Donny had disappeared.

'I saw him going out the door and assumed he was going to the toilet,' said Daphne helpfully. 'He always goes to the toilet before a show.'

'Better than during one,' said Davey, and he started sniggering.

It took a long hard stare from both Daphne and Deirdre to stop him from carrying on this train of thought.

'Well, he better come back soon,' said a concerned Daphne. 'We're due on stage and we can't be late.' She paused for a moment. 'You know what they say.'

'Do you?' said Davey annoyingly.

'The show must go on.' Daphne began to sound even more concerned. 'Does that mean that if Donny doesn't get back in time that the show will go on without us?'

Deirdre snorted.

'How could it?' she said dismissively. 'We are the show.'

'Are you?' said Davey, being annoying again. You would think that she would have known better, but Deirdre foolishly took the bait.

'Why are you so annoying?' she asked the annoying Davey.

'You are,' he replied annoyingly.

'No, you are,' she replied.

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'You are.'

'No, you are.'

'Are you?' came the triumphant response, and with the dogged determination of a patient hunter, Davey's trap was well and truly sprung.

This is going to run and run if I don't step in straight away.

'The crowd outside is getting very noisy,' Daphne suddenly felt very mysteriously compelled to point out, even though it wasn't possible to hear the crowd from this room. 'Has anyone gone to look for Donny?'

Deirdre and Davey stopped fighting.

'What are we going to do if Donny isn't found?' continued Daphne. 'As you said, the show must go on, you know.'

Daphne was starting to look more and more confused.

'And now we know that the show must go on, and it will be us who the show goes on with, then it could ruin the show if there is only three of us on stage to go on with the show with.'

As you can hear, Daphne was getting very close to the edge now. (So am I).

'Who is going to play the drums?' she shrieked.

'I've always thought it looked really easy,' said Deirdre matter-of-factly. 'Perhaps I could have a go?'

'But,' said Davey, 'who would do your thing?'

'Well,' Deirdre replied. 'I could do my thing at the same time.'

'I doubt it,' said Davey. 'You can barely manage to do your own thing on your own, let alone do someone else's thing on your own as well as your own thing at the same time.'

Davey turned to face the remaining members of Doodah. Just occasionally, there were moments in his life when he felt inspired. This was one of them.

'Listen to me,' he said inspirationally. 'We are Doodah and we have been Doodah since we started being Doodah. In fact, we were all Doodah before we were Doodah, even though we didn't know we were Doodah.'

Davey stopped to let his brain catch up with his breath.

'The crowd outside are waiting to see Doodah, so we will go outside and show them we are Doodah.'

Davey was on a roll now.

'If Donny doesn't show up before the concert starts, then we will play on without a drummer.' Davey paused as if to demonstrate his business acumen.

'In any case, we haven't got time to find anyone else and it is far too late to be printing new t-shirts, calendars and pencil cases with a new drummer's face on them.'

'But...' Deirdre began. Davey cut her off.

'That's the end of it,' he said. 'Now let's start getting ready.' Davey turned triumphantly to the mirror and began applying his make-up. As he did so, Donny suddenly reappeared.

67. Donny Starts Talking Proper

'Donny,' said Deirdre sternly. 'Where have you been? The show is about to start and you need to get ready.'

'But ready is such a relative term,' said Donny to the surprise of everyone present. 'I think that I must simply ask you to elaborate further before I can even begin to postulate a response here.'

'Donny,' gasped Daphne. 'What were you doing in the toilet? Why are you talking in this scary, thinkful way?' Daphne was as frightened of complex words as the next pop star.

'Well, I think it is only right for me, at this juncture in the unfolding of time and space, to give you my most absolute and blessed assurance that my recent visit to the restroom is not a topic that I have any intention of discussing in public, now or at any other time,' said Donny very gravely. 'And in any case,' he continued, 'with reference to your previous question, I have always chosen to conduct my linguistic life in this lyrical manner.'

This is absolutely not true. Donny had never spoken like this in his entire life. He never really had anything to say and even if he did happen to have something to say, which, as I am suggesting, is rarely ever, he would never say it like this. I should know.

Like other people who aren't much for talking, Donny's world was one of grunts and nods and sighs, with the occasional sentence emerging from this glottal gloom.

'Donny, how's your lunch?' you might ask him if you had just served him his favourite soup and sandwich combination – which, according to www.welovedoodah.com is listed as 'Vegetable soup with a vegetable sandwich but without the vegetables'.

'Mhmhmhmh!' he would probably reply. Or 'Pssssthhh!' Possibly even 'Grrrrrrrrnth!' You could be sure that he wouldn't say, 'Very nice, thank you, but the seasoning is a trifle lacking.' Or even simply, 'Thank you.'

There wasn't really any need to engage Donny in conversation about anything. It just seemed simpler and more life affirming not to have to. This is why everyone was so surprised at how he now sounded after a seemingly simple trip to the bathroom.

Simply put, Donny had never spoken this way before. Even more simply put, Donny had never ever spoken this way before with a slightly robotic twang to his voice. Even more simply put than the last two simply puts, Donny had never ever spoken this way before whilst smelling very slightly of rusty oil.

Deirdre was extremely puzzled by the whole Donny thing, but what with the show about to start and everything else she had to think about, she really couldn't be bothered to pursue this whole thing any further.

'You better get your outfit on,' she simply told the drummer. 'The show is about to start and I really cannot be bothered to pursue this whole thing any further.'

'Well, I am willing to at least discuss the possibility of maybe changing my entire attire for the benefit of the collective good, but this will not be before I have had the chance to interrogate you all individually as to the reasons for you all believing that such a personal metamorphosis is truly necessary,' replied Donny gnomically.

'Hang on,' said Davey, his hopes for a simple world as equally dashed as Daphne's, 'where have you just been, Super-Pointless-People-Saying-Stupid-Long-Things-School?'

As he spoke, Davey thought he could detect a slight smell of oil in the air. 'Probably nothing,' he thought, 'just me being the super-sensitive and hyper-imaginative soul that I am.'

'Come on, everyone,' he shouted to everyone. 'We've got a show to get on with, so let's get on with it.'

68. Is Donny Really Donny?

Ellis opened the door to Doodah's dressing room and stepped inside, followed by the two superheroes.

'Guys,' said Ellis, 'Dr. Don't Know's Troublebots have...'

Ellis stopped talking. For a split second, everything seemed normal but almost at once, she noticed that the dressing room smelled faintly of rusty oil and Donny was finishing tying up the other members of Doodah with electrical cable. 'Donny' looked up.

'Don't worry,' 'he' said, 'you're all next.'

Quick as a flash, 'Donny' leapt towards Ellis but she was too quick and she ducked. 'Donny' sailed over her head and crashed straight into Bewilder Bird's chest. Bewilder Bird fell backwards. The Troublebot landed on top of him.

'Falcon Boy,' shouted Ellis, 'you know what to do!'

'I do,' said Falcon Boy excitedly. 'I really, really do.'

And Falcon Boy did. So he did what he knew he needed to do.

Falcon Boy jumped onto the back of 'Donny' and tried to pull him off Bewilder Bird. Bewilder Bird was trying to stand up and between the two of them, they turned 'Donny' over. Bewilder Bird grabbed one arm and Falcon Boy grabbed the other.

'Quick, Ellis,' shouted Falcon Boy. 'It's your turn!'

He pulled open the front of the scarecrow outfit. Ellis could see the grille but she didn't think she would be able to open it. On a nearby table was a crate of the world's most famous soft drink, Fuzzy Cola©.

Doodah are proud endorsers of Fuzzy Cola© and you see their photograph on every bottle. When I say proud, I actually mean oblivious – it is Doodah's management who are 'proud' to endorse Fuzzy Cola©. Doodah are simply Doodah as they sing the theme tune:

If you're not feelin' buzzy

Why not reach for a bottle of

Fuzzy Cola?

It'll bowl you over

Fuzzy Cola

We'll win you over

with Fuzzy Fuzzy Cola

Fuzzy Cola

Because

Fuzzy is our Fizzness!!

Fuzzy Cola© is banned in many countries and is also on the World Health Organization's Dangerous Products Watch List. That's fine, but pop concerts are different things altogether and there were crates of the stuff everywhere. As Councillor Footswerve reminded his wife, 'It isn't all rotten teeth and obesity, you know. They do a lot for charity that no one ever hears about.'

Normally, Ellis would not be allowed to be in the same room as a bottle of the stuff.

But in extraordinary times and extraordinary situations, it was extraordinarily important to be able to make extraordinary exceptions, and Ellis was sure that at this moment of extraordinary crisis, even her Mum and Dad would be extraordinarily understanding and momentarily relax their extraordinarily rigid rules on the subject long enough for her to grab a bottle and use it to disable an extraordinarily dangerous Troublebot.

'If this stuff really does destroy your teeth, makes your eyes go in and out of focus, and causes small children in other countries to not only go hungry, but also have to leave school before they are ready in order to do a job they hate,' Ellis said out loud, 'then I wonder what it might do to a Troublebot?'

Just before 'Donny' managed to break free, Ellis stepped forward and poured the bottle of Fuzzy Cola© into the Troublebot's grille.

Straight away, 'Donny' stopped struggling. The superheroes let go of him. Oily, sparky froth started coming out of his mouth and ears.

'We are one-thumb, two-thumb good,' gurgled the Troublebot disguised as Donny. 'Bringing joy...' the singing stopped as the vocal circuits began to melt and fuse together. 'Donny' gave a foamy, sparky, belchy, gaseous, shuddery shudder before collapsing onto the ground.

'Hooray,' cheered Doodah in a hitherto unexpected, and never to be repeated, moment of group harmony, 'you superheroes and your young friend have really truly saved us.'

Falcon Boy and Bewilder Bird bowed and start posing in their usual triumphant ways, as Ellis started untying the band.

'Don't worry,' said Falcon Boy, with his chin pointing to the sky. 'That wasn't really the real Donny we just superheroically destroyed, it was merely a Troublebot disguised as your drummer.'

'You don't say,' thought Ellis, but she didn't (say anything). Ellis noticed a knocking noise coming from a trunk in the corner of the dressing room. She opened the lock on the front and out jumped the real Donny.

'Ready am I,' he shouted. 'Mmmmmmmth!!'

'That's our Donny,' cheered Daphne, Deirdre and Davey, in a weird repeat of what had seemingly been an unrepeatable moment of group harmony.

In fact, so stunning was this piece of vocal synchronicity that the members of the group looked at each other in astonishment. However, before they could do any more than register the thought that something might require some further thought – a possibility as strange to Doodah as the synchronicity itself – there was a knock on the door and the stage manager stuck his head into the room.

'You are due on stage in one minute,' he said.

The shared thought, and the potentially life-changing possibilities inherent within its delicate DNA, were shattered by this new news and fell silently to the ground to lay like the promise of an alternative future all broken and smashed into tiny, silent, sullen shards.

69. Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

The world was still not safe from the danger of Dr. Don't Know, but at least Falcon Boy had risen from the grave and helped Ellis and Bewilder Bird stop three Troublebots from living up to their name.

'I wonder how we are going to find the remaining Troublebots and thwart whatever Dr. Don't Know is up to,' Ellis wondered to herself. She didn't have to wait too long to find out.

The trouble really started as Doodah and the rest of their backing dancers walked out onto the stage to the opening bars of Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

'Good evening, Panic Town!' they shouted. 'You are really delighted to see us.'

And Panic Town was, as was the rest of the world. A big cheer rang out across the cosmos.

'Come on,' shouted Deirdre, Daphne, Davey and Donny in the kind of harmony that can only truly be achieved electronically. 'Join in if you know the words.' (You can as well if you really feel like it!)

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

(Are you tired yet?)

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

(Keep going, you're nearly there!!!)

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

The official version of Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! lasts for thirteen minutes and thirty-two seconds, and has remained at the top of any chart you could think of for the last five and a half years. In its time there, Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! has inspired at least three hundred thousand million remixes, mash-ups, thrown-togethers, and any other audiovisual combination you can think of.

The virulent spread of the Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! meme has resulted in the further creation of various genres and sub-genres. The most popular of these are the hundreds and thousands of fan-made films, where footage of people dancing in any kind of style has the Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! audio track laid over the top of it.

Another popular sub-strand of this meme has the song being played over short looped clips of animals doing animal things like, for example:

cats licking cats,

bats falling asleep,

snakes smiling,

pandas chewing bamboo and then doing their business (Doodah's record label tried unsuccessfully to have this particular strand of the sub-genre removed from the world wide web),

sneezing ponies,

mice sleeping next to frogs,

badgers dancing near mushrooms,

rabbits caught in doorways,

rained-upon reindeer,

turtles wrestling with bricks,

dogs barking at bees,

bees stinging dogs,

swans being startled,

elephants eating cheese,

confused-looking tigers,

and chickens riding hypnotized alligators.

A further notable sub-strand of this meme is the footage of people from all over the world doing the official dance moves to Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! in all kinds of crazy places including, just occasionally, on stage.

As everyone knows, with a few exceptions as we are about to see, the official actions to accompany Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! require you to stick your hands on your head like two rabbit ears and flap them backwards and forwards whilst knocking your knees together.

If you have ever danced along, and perhaps some of you reading this have already uploaded films of yourselves doing just that, or maybe are planning to do such a thing once you have finished reading, you will know that the intense pain that accompanies this song doesn't just come from repeating the same few words non-stop for nearly fourteen minutes.

Ellis stood at the side of the stage and started to dance. As we all now know, the dance is an extremely simple one yet she couldn't understand why half of Doodah's backing dancers didn't know what to do.

'Perhaps they are new to show business,' she thought. 'They might be really nervous. Or maybe the unicorn outfits are too tight.'

As the song continues, the words remain the same but the tune speeds up and so the actions get faster and faster:

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go!

As the song got faster, Ellis noticed that the same dancers were struggling to keep up. One of them wobbled slightly and nearly fell on her. 'I know that smell,' thought Ellis. 'Rusty oil.'

The tempo increased again and at least half the unicorns got further and further out of time.

'That's it,' realised Ellis. 'The other Troublebots are disguised as Doodah's backing dancers.'

It is possible to argue here that perhaps Ellis should have realised earlier, but she has had a lot to contend with recently and is still new to this world-saving business. In any case, there will be another forty-seven choruses of Hey! Ho! Giddy, Giddy Go! Go! so Ellis has plenty of time to find the others and raise the alarm.

70. The Needs of the Many

Ellis knew that she needed to do something straight away or the badly-dancing Troublebots were going to ruin the show. Not only that, they would also be helping Dr. Don't Know do something really wicked. She looked around.

Bewilder Bird was up into the lighting gantry high above the stage. Ellis could see that he looked pretty tangled – one of his claw-foot-boots was caught in a coil of electrical cable – and so it was unlikely that he would be able to spring into action anytime soon.

She signalled to him and pointed at the stage. He shook his head and cupped his ear. He couldn't hear what she was saying even though she hadn't said anything. Ellis feared that this was going to be a long night.

Rather like Windy, but nowhere near as speedy, Falcon Boy had gone to alert the authorities and it wasn't long before Ellis found him returning with Captain Lori Lorimer and a selection of her finest men and women.

'I'm glad you are here, Captain Lorimer,' said Ellis. 'Dr. Don't Know's Troublebots have disguised themselves as backing dancers.' Ellis pointed out onto the stage. 'Look out for the ones who can't dance.'

Falcon Boy had been standing silently while Ellis was talking to Captain Lorimer. Now he spoke.

'The Troublebots are disguised as backing dancers,' he told the Captain, as if Ellis wasn't there and the Captain hadn't just been briefed, 'but they cannot dance and so should be very easy for us to spot.'

Ellis sighed. Captain Lorimer wasn't sure what to make of the whole thing. She looked slightly embarrassed. Falcon Boy was unabashed.

'I suggest you instruct your men to apprehend them,' he continued.

'But how?' asked Captain Lorimer. 'I cannot just disrupt the show. There are a hundred thousand people in the crowd and several hundred million more watching on screens all around the world.' Captain Lorimer pushed her hat back slightly and scratched her forehead.

Captain Lorimer felt conflicted here. She was delighted that Dr. Don't Know's plot had begun to be discovered and was potentially only several pages away from being foiled. She was also relieved to hear that there was no further mention of the Moon Rope. 'Perhaps I might get to keep my job after all,' she thought.

However, she took her responsibilities very seriously. She couldn't simply act on the advice of a useless-looking costumed crime-fighter and a young child without thinking things through. After all, this was the same costumed crime-fighter she had recently had to tell to stop directing bank holiday traffic.

'We need to act very carefully here,' she told Falcon Boy. 'We all need to take our time and act thoughtfully.'

Falcon Boy snorted.

'We need to act immediately,' he declared. 'This is not the time for taking our time.'

I'm sure that you are probably thinking here about how rude Falcon Boy was being to Captain Lorimer. She was the real representative of law and order here, and deserved the respect of everyone.

She also had the whole weight of the world on her shoulders, and so we can forgive her if she seemed a little cautious. She needed to balance the needs of the many with the desires of the few.

We cannot all just jump into every situation without thinking carefully about where we might land. Otherwise, everyone would jump and all land in a heap together. This would achieve nothing, unless there was an occasion when everyone needed to land in a heap together. Even then, it isn't clear what that would really accomplish.

On the other hand, it is perhaps understandable that Falcon Boy is keener to act than to think. After all, superheroes are traditionally known more for their action than they are for their powers of introspection.

Just think how different this story would have been if Falcon Boy had been the brooding type and spent all of his time questioning his position within a seemingly hostile and random universe.

Imagine if he spent his day writing poetry questioning the position that an individual occupies in relation to the Void.

I am a hero

But am I?

Perhaps

I am

No one.

What is a hero

Anyway?

Or what if Falcon Boy chose other forms of expression to express his angst? Dark gloomy-looking paintings, for example, all angry and thick with layers of black paint? Or, long rambling novels written in the first person and called things like Struggle, Me and the Void, or The Fall (Again)? Perhaps he might specialize in black and white photographs of alleyways and waste ground that were actually comments upon the marginality of Man? And this is just Falcon Boy.

I shudder to think how differently the world of this adventure would be spinning if it had spent most of its time allowing Bewilder Bird to wander and wonder and worry, filling school exercise books with barely legible recording of his wanderings and wonderings and worryings. With alternatives like these as possibilities, perhaps it is best that Falcon Boy is a little hasty sometimes.

71. Ellis Gets Things Going Again

Anyway, as is becoming increasingly more frequent, it was left to Ellis to get things going once again.

'Falcon Boy,' she shouted above the roar of the crowd. 'You should use your special power to tell Bewilder Bird to use the spotlights to point out the Troublebots, so that they can be removed from the stage without causing chaos.'

She turned to Captain Lorimer.

'We simply cannot let the Troublebots ruin the show.'

Falcon Boy nodded, but whenever he uses his superpower he cannot stop his lips moving, and so it looked like he was talking to himself. He would make a terrible ventriloquist.

Captain Lorimer turned to her assembled men and issued her orders.

'Quick, men and women,' she said. 'We need to get the Troublebots off of the stage one at a time so as not to ruin the show.'

Her men and women agreed and so as one show continued, another show began. Which one is the sideshow and which one is the main attraction is for you to decide.

Using the closest spotlight to him, Bewilder Bird shone it on the badly-dancing dancers one at a time. As each Troublebot was caught in the spotlight, two policemen sprinted onto the stage dressed as stagehands.

Each policeman carried a heavy-duty magnet that they used to stun each Troublebot. More policemen waited backstage and deactivated the stunned Troublebots with a bucket of water. There were sparks everywhere but anyone who saw them thought they were simply part of the show.

The deactivated Troublebots were piled in the back of an open-top lorry, ready to be taken to the Panic Town Detention Centre where prisoners will strip them of all their useful parts. Anything left after this will then be sent to the Panic Town Recycling Centre.

As the Troublebot cull began, nobody watching in the audience thought that anything odd was happening. As far as they were concerned, it was all part of the wonderful stage show that Doodah had created especially for them.

Even Dr. Don't Know was taken in as he waited patiently beneath the stage. He was watching the concert on his telephone and waiting for the moment when he could activate his terrible plan.

72. What a Show!

And what a show!

Though he is barely capable of sensible speech, Donny Doodah is a seasoned professional and his performance is so polished that he can 'play' the drum with one drumstick whilst drinking an ice-cold bottle of everyone's favourite Fuzzy Cola© at the same time.

Davey Doodah can't sing to save his life but he finds it very hard to stop smiling. Even though he wouldn't know the meaning of either of the following words, his enthusiasm is certainly infectious. As he sways slightly in front of the microphone encouraging the audience to put their hands in the air, Davey truly looks like the epitome of pop star perfection.

Daphne Doodah bashes, waves, whacks and whirls her silent tambourine. Daphne isn't aware that the tambourine can't make a sound but it doesn't matter anyway. A simple fact like this would never stop her from really shaking it really, really hard over her head in a shiny, shimmering shower of silvery silent notes.

Deirdre Doodah sings and dances as if every performance is her last. This would probably be the case were there ever to be a power cut during a performance, and so Doodah's record company spends at least fifty per cent of its budget on ensuring that the various digital enhancements designed to make a Doodah concert the pleasurable experience it is do not ever malfunction while the group are 'live' on stage.

Nobody would pay money to hear what Doodah really sounded like. There would be riots on the streets and questions asked in parliaments all around the world.

Eventually, the climax of the show approached. The lights dimmed and the backing track started to play the opening bars of One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good. With the loud burst of the cannons shaped like the claws of an enormous bear paw, Doodah landed back on the stage.

'Come on, everybody,' they shouted. 'It's time to make some special noise!' Doodah started dancing as they waited to sing the first verse.

Doodah all find the dancing part quite hard and so they tend to count in their heads to keep time. As Doodah kept counting and dancing, Ellis was amazed to see a small man wearing a black baseball cap appear in the middle of the stage from a secret trapdoor.

'Dr. Don't Know,' she said to herself.

And it was.

73. Here's That Man Himself

Dr. Don't Know is small and always wears black. After years of experimentation, he had finally settled on jogging trousers with an elasticated waistband, a polo neck, a baseball cap and rubber boots as his bad guy super villain evil outfit of choice.

Dr. Don't Know's favourite show is the highly-influential What Bad Guys Wear. Each week, the show reports on what is hot and what is not in the world of uber-villain fashion. Viewers are also treated to a tour of the homes, lairs, laboratories, caves, cribs and other super villain residences.

Dr. Don't Know found What Bad Guys Wear very intimidating. It was so hard to decide on a public image. For a while, he figured that a purple facemask and fluorescent goggles would make him look more menacing, but sweat filled his eyes when he got too hot and he couldn't see to drive a moped.

Another time, it was all the rage for super-evil international villains to wear expensive handmade suits but Dr. Don't Know could never find one that fitted him properly. No self-respecting criminal mastermind wanted to have to turn up the hem of the trousers.

According to his plan, this was exactly the right time for Dr. Don't Know to appear but when he had been planning this caper, he hadn't factored in the possibility that his plan might have been thwarted this early in its execution. This meant that now was exactly the wrong time for him to appear.

Having visualized this moment a thousand times in his mind, Dr. Don't Know had always imagined that this would be the exact moment when the world was his to command. Sadly, this was not the case and now he was just Dr. Don't Know, alone on the stage at a Doodah concert, in front of millions and millions of people.

Daphne, Davey and Deirdre turned in unison and moved towards the microphones, ready for the chorus.

'Ouch,' said Davey, as he tripped over Dr. Don't Know. 'Who on earth are you?'

'Don't know,' replied Dr. Don't Know.

'What are you doing here?' screamed Daphne. 'You're getting right in the way.'

This was the trickiest part of the song and Daphne knew that if she was talking, then she wasn't counting and if she wasn't counting. then it meant she was out of time. She was.

'Are you going to just stand there?' asked Deirdre. 'Or are you going to dance?'

'Don't know,' said Dr. Don't Know.

Were this the dress rehearsal, then Deirdre would have gone crazy about the unauthorized outfit appearing on the stage but it wasn't, so all she could do was make a mental note to herself that perhaps an outfit like this one would be what Doodah would be wearing for their next concert.

Dr. Don't Know doesn't know how to dance, and so he just stood there awkwardly and got in everybody's way. This is how empires crumble.

Nobody knows for sure – and it would probably be better for the story if somebody did – why it was that Dr. Don't Know turned to a life of crime in the first place, but it is quite clear that dedicating his life in this way left him with very little time for anything else. This might explain why he can't dance.

Whatever the case, and the speculation here is now making the end of this story take even longer to arrive, where once the thwarted super villain might have loomed large and menacing in most people's minds, Dr. Don't Know now just looked small and lost and forlorn. Everything that had seemed so powerful about him previously seemed so simply vulnerable now, and Ellis began to feel very sorry for him. She looked around.

Bewilder Bird had managed to get himself untangled from the lighting and he and Falcon Boy stood ready to pounce. Captain Lori Lorimer and her officers were also ready, but at this moment, Ellis made the kind of decision that I always knew would make her the central focus of this story.

'Stop!' she shouted to the assembled forces of law and order. 'Leave this to me.'

And definitely feeling like the hero in her own story now, Ellis walked out onto the stage. The music had stopped. Doodah were standing still now. The most evil man in the whole wide universe was standing just in front of her. Unaffected by any of this, Ellis walked up to Dr. Don't Know and touched him gently on the arm.

'Come on,' she said. 'Let's all go home'.

Dr. Don't Know simply nodded. Ellis took his hand and the two of them walked off stage. The crowd had been watching silently, but now they began to shout and cheer.

For many of them, this was still part of the most amazing live show they had ever seen and they simply weren't aware of how close the world had just come to total and utter catastrophe.

Now, obviously the police needed to speak to Dr. Don't Know for a long time but for the moment, at least, his evil plan to ruin the world forever had not happened.

The music started playing again and Doodah began to dance. Davey, Deirdre, Daphne and Donny all turned to the side of the stage and beckoned to Ellis to come out and join them.

'How exciting,' Ellis thought, as she went out to join in the encore.

'Wait for us,' said Falcon Boy wanly. 'We were heroes too!'

Ellis rolled her eyes but even despite Falcon Boy's obvious failings, she was becoming very fond of this fairly hopeless hero. Bewilder Bird tried to dance but as you know by now, his boots make it very hard for him to do anything properly.

Anyway, it doesn't matter as at this point in the story, no one is really going to start quibbling about whether or not superheroes should be able to dance properly. Let's just sit back and enjoy the rest of the show.

'Here we go,' said Davey to the watching world. '1, 2, 3, 5...'

We are One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good,

Bringing joy to the Neighbourhood,

Nothing ever stops us smiling,

Nothing ever could,

We just keep on going because

We are One-Thumb, Two-Thumb Good.'

The End

