My Kids are Saving the World: #3, The Secret Spot

Atican's secret spot used to be the shower in the bathroom he had attached to his bedroom. Since no one would ever expect Atican to be in the shower, he hid stuff there, like all his data about color splitting and his collection of Yu-gi-oh cards. Atican also had a secret hole to the attic, where he kept all of his important tools and video games. He had his own Coke machine with an endless supply of Cokes that he could drink without his parents knowing. And his fastest computer was up there, too. He built it himself with parts he designed himself and it was as fast as any computer the military had. He never told anyone about it, because such a fast computer was actually dangerous, it could be used to quickly crack even the toughest encryption.

But the really important data, like all that technical data about color splitting, the 4.3rd dimension and molecular density, he kept in the shower, along with the really important stuff, Atican's collection of Yugioh cards.

Atican owned the most prized dueling deck of anyone in the country. Since his cover was that of a young Yu-gi-oh champion, having this deck was important. He was often invited to compete in tournaments around the world, and thus he had access that most people could not have gained. But this also meant he was always the subject of a variety attacks, to try to steal his cards. He was attacked both by other Yu-gi-oh players that wanted his powerful deck as well as sinister world spies that wanted to prevent him from travelling.

So, Atican defended his secret spot with flatulence! Yes, Atican made sure his bathroom was always extra stinky, with violently vile farts he saved in mason jars below the sink after every meal at a Mexican restaurant. In an emergency, he could toss a jar like a grenade, and when it shattered, the vile stinkiness, now weeks or months old and rotting like a mixture of spoiled milk, moldy fish and stomach bile would come screaming out. Actually, it would be the intruders would would come screaming out -- of the house. The smell was just smell, after all, and couldn't scream. Atican, like anyone else, liked the smell of his own farts and smiled as whatever intruder he had just thwarted went running off into the night.

Things were all fine and dandy for Atican until one night when he was finishing up marking papers for the online astro-physics course he was teaching and someone attacked. As Atican ran to the bathroom to get out a jar of fart, he saw a cockroach and froze. Atican's kryptonite isn't kryptonite. Quite the opposite, Atican smears kryptonite on his toast, bathes in kryptonite, sleeps on kryptonite! Alas, though, he's very afraid of the sickly but harmless Texas-sized cockroach. He couldn't go into his bathroom and retrieve his jar of fart to use as defense, and the attacker grabbed him, tied him up with duct tape and made off with everything in his secret hiding place, including his hoard of Yugioh cards and notes on splitting colors. With this information the attacker could either save the earth by finally figuring out how to split colors into that specific hue of fuchsia that will mark the end of all energy problems, or handily win all the Yugioh tournaments. Worse yet, word of Atican's cockroach fears made it to the Internet and although everyone knew he'd gladly eat worms, pet snakes, sleep with tarantulas and stick his tongue out at grizzly bears, all his friends started making fun of him. It was, after all, the first sign of weakness in Atican. The first sign he was just a really smart, super-athletic human and not some sort of superhero with exceptional powers. And besides, kids can be cruel.