My Kids are Saving the World: #2, in Which Devyn Captures a Dictator
The NSA needed a teenager to build a small robot to infiltrate and possibly capture the ruthless dictator Caspin Crunachian. Crunachian called himself President of the small island country of Tiniabonita. Tiniabonita was about to come to the forefront of international politics. The NSA had been spying on Crunachian for over a year. That's how they found out Tiniabonita was secretly building millions of super-miniature automobile engines capable of speeds over 200 miles per hour but fuel economy of 2000 miles per gallon of Gasalter. Gasalter was two parts salt water and one part premium unleaded gasoline. When used in their miniature car engines, which were placed in full sized cars, the Gasalter Engine would run for a year on ten gallons of fuel. And the ruthless Crunachian was just going to give them away, like Oprah!
The NSA, which most Americans did not know had been forcefully overrun by corrupt American Big Oil Executives, couldn't stand by for this un-American behavior, irregardless if it did come from a non-American. The Executives teamed up with oil barons from the Middle East, their former enemies. Together they hoped to foil Tiniabonita's plans and continue to overcharge the poor American petrol user, a simple person who wanted nothing but to drive his fancy, oversized vehicle everywhere he went, even if it was only to get the mail at the end of the driveway.
They enlisted my teenage son Devyn because Devyn is a world champion robot designer. They wanted a teenager because they knew that while the vile Caspin Crunachian was always worried about spies, he would never suspect a teenager with long hair and whose jean hung low, always showing about half of his underwear. They were right, Crunachian didn't suspect a thing; at least not right at first.
The NSA flew Devyn down to Tiniabonita under the guise of being a champion surfer. Devyn had skateboarded for years, and the migration to surfer in the epic Tiniabonita West Shore surf would prove inconsequential to a boy of his natural ability. What, after all, is falling into water after you'd landed on pavement, especially to a world champion?
Since Devyn's robotic expertise was legendary -- as world champion he had made all the headlines, even on Google News -- they decided they must disquise him and did so by using the name Denyv. Since his alias sounded Russian, they forged for him a Russian passport and made up a story about how he learned to surf on the North Sea. The NSA coached Devyn, AKA Denyv, to speak with a Russian accent, similar to how the characters in the TV show Hogan's Heroes avoided detection by speaking English with a German accent.
Denyv arrived on Tiniabonita in the morning, learned to surf that afternoon, and had built a secret robot that night. The robot, which Denyv named Smiley, was going to sneak into the Gasalter Engine Factory and saw all the load bearing struts in half, which would cause it to collapse and crush all the engines. Then the robot would go capture Crunachian, all while Denyv surfed, thereby establishing his alibi. It was a flawless plan.
Except for one flaw.
As Denyv drove his Vespa to the outskirts of the factory to cut a hole in the fence and start the robot, he was stopped for driving on the wrong side of the road, which was the right side, so who knows what Denyv was thinking. The cop discovered he was not, in fact, Russian. Denyv's accent was excellent, but he didn't actually know any Russian words, not even "Da" which means "Yes." The cop, who had sister-in-law in Moscow, also found the robot strapped to the back of the scooter and called for backup, which was actually the Emporer Caspin Cruanchian himself! Apparently the sheriff was on vacation and Crunachian was just filling in.
They hauled Denyv off to be "interrogated" and quickly they learned the whole story. They had a very progressive interrogation technique where they took Denyv out for pizza and let him ask them questions. After Denyv discovered that Crunachian was really a nice dude, he volunteered that he was really Devyn, the world champion robotier, and he was hired by the NSA because Crunachian was supposedly ruthless.
Then Crunachian, who knew how good a robotier was Devyn, was relieved that Devyn did not go through with his plan to destroy the factory, and told Devyn the whole story about how the ABOE called him to buy his super-efficient car technology. When he wouldn't sell, they became irate and threatened him a lot. He told them he was going to just give away his invention. He had plenty of money, power and fame, and wanted to give back to the world, like the way Bill Gates was doing.
Then the ABOE took over the fun-loving and docile NSA, locked them all in the basement of a house in Detroit and conned Devyn into attacking the tiny sovereign island nation.
Devyn immediately left Tiniabonita on a mission to save the NSA.
