MY BEST FRIEND IS A SECRET AGENT, Book 3: How C.H.I.P. Took on C.H.I.M.P. and...

Chapter 3: "A Day at the Fair"

The day of the science fair arrived.

I brought in my experiment (The Tornado Toothbrush 6000!) locked in a briefcase. I didn't want anybody to see it ahead of time 'cause people were always trying to steal my award-winning ideas. Chip, my head of security, walked ahead of me, clearing my path. He was ready for everything.

Corey Smertz jumped in to give me a wedgie, but Chip cut him off and gave Corey an atomic wedgie.

Pik Manose tried to use executive privilege to get me to reveal my science project, but I told him I voted for the other guy.

Even Carla Mawhinney tried to get me to break and show her my science project early, fluttering her eyelashes at me with a coy smile, but Chip stood between her and me, and I kept my gaze aimed straight ahead.

I took position at my booth, setting up everything behind a little curtain. While working, I glanced around at the other entries.

Mervin Melnik had made a solar power exhibit that turned out later to be powered by squirrels on a treadmill.

Lucy Tam's automatic page-turner shredded half the books in the school library.

And Ulrich Pelkinburger's dog ate his science project the night before and had to be rushed to the vet. (Dogs have a bad reaction to the glue in papier mache.)

I smiled to myself. It was going to be another slam dunk. That First Prize trophy was mine.

But then I spotted Gert. She had her chimp with her, and that was all. Was that going to be her science project? Just the chimp? Or did she have an angle? Was she going to dress him up in human clothes? Or have him swing from the overhead lights? Or collect money in a tin cup?

"Behold," Gert said, "the world's smartest chimpanzee!" She threw a badly-made graduation robe on him and one of those square graduation hats on his head. It was so pathetic.

But then she held up a red piece of construction paper and showed it to the chimp. "What color is this?" she asked him. And the chimp answered in sign language, spelling out "RED" with his hands!

"Are you hungry?" Gert asked the chimp, holding up a banana. "Would you like this?" Then the chimp actually spelled out "BANANA"!

Finally, she asked the chimp, "Who's the stupidest kid in school?" And the chimp spelled out "NORT".

Gert looked directly at me and burst out laughing, and the crowd joined in. I was humiliated. And, suddenly, I wasn't so proud of my Tornado Toothbrush 6000. Sure, it could brush your teeth in 0.98 seconds, but it didn't have the Wow! factor of a chimpanzee that could understand English and speak in sign language... and make fun of me!

It was now my turn to present my project, and I was sure I was going to lose to Gert von Brugen. Lacking all confidence, I fumbled my way through. "Uh, this is the n-new Tornado Toothbrush 6000. It can do amazing things... like b-brush your teeth, um, really fast! Allow me to dem-demonstrate."

I gestured to Chip, and he started brushing his teeth with the electric toothbrush. It was really fast, alright. It flapped his lips all over the place, and spit started flying everywhere. Then it sped up even more and careened all over his mouth! I tried turning it off with the Tornado Toothbrush 6000 app I had on my phone, but it just kept going more and more haywire!

But the worst thing was, Gert's chimp started flapping his big chimp lips, making fun of Chip! The crowd really cracked up, and I just wanted to crawl under a log in shame.

But then I noticed something strange: The chimp was wearing a collar, and something on it was blinking red. I wondered what it was...

Suddenly, the Tornado Toothbrush 6000 snagged Chip's false tooth and sent it flying across the room! It didn't have the C.H.I.P. 2.0 microthingy in it – I had taken it out earlier because I knew Chip would be demonstrating the toothbrush. But as I watched the tooth sail through the air, I flashed back to when Gert yanked it out before in the school kitchen, when C.H.I.P. had become an unknowing accomplice to the evil (and wacky) Dr. Eelstrom. And this made me realize what was actually going on:

Gert must have later found the C.H.I.P. 1.0 microthingy that had fallen off the tooth! That's what was blinking red in the chimp's collar, and she was now using it to make her chimp supersmart!

I tried to imagine how Gert could've gotten the C.H.I.P. 1.0 to work. Lacking my technological genius (and super-tiny microtools!), she probably had no idea where to start.

Maybe she tried to give it a huge electric jolt, like Dr. Frankenstein with lightning.

Or maybe she wired it to her house's power box, blowing out the whole house in the process.

However she did it, she clearly needed someone or something to try it out on who didn't have much say in the matter: the chimp!

(For what it's worth, I never actually forced Chip to participate in any of my experiments. Okay, I plied him with my mom's chocolate chip cookies now and then, but he was always my guinea pig by choice!)

Anyway, Chip eventually dropped the Tornado Toothbrush 6000, and I had to chase it around the room, its intense vibration making it dart around like a hyper mouse. I found Chip's tooth too as he just sat there in a daze, his brain cells frazzled from all the shaking.

Meanwhile, Gert was on top of the world as Principal Fleming handed her the First Prize trophy. In her eyes, she'd finally done it. She'd finally out-scienced me, and she had the chrome-plated trophy to prove it. But as I looked at the blinking red light in her chimp's collar, where my C.H.I.P. 1.0 microthingy was working away making the chimp supersmart, I knew that it was I who truly deserved that trophy. Gert von Brugen had stolen my technology, and now everybody – including Carla Mawhinney! – was cheering for her instead of me.

That's when I realized something. I had the app that controlled the C.H.I.P. 1.0. I could shut down her chimp anytime I wanted to! So I whipped out my phone and hit the "deactivate" button.

And nothing happened. The red light on the chimp's collar kept blinking, and the chimp kept doing sign language and making people laugh. Just great, I thought. Gert got the C.H.I.P. 1.0 working again, but not completely, so there was no way for me or her to send it commands or even shut it off. Something like this could be dangerous in the wrong circumstances. I realized I had to get the C.H.I.P. 1.0 back before it got out of control – or at least until Gert could use it to make a fool of me again.

But before I could figure out how to do that, a matter of greater urgency presented itself to me and Chip in the form of an old and very wacky nemesis.