The Ice Cream Machine Read online

  Also by Adam Rubin

  Gladys the Magic Chicken

  High Five

  El Chupacabras

  Dragons Love Tacos 2: The Sequel

  Robo-Sauce

  Secret Pizza Party

  Dragons Love Tacos

  Big Bad Bubble

  Those Darn Squirrels Fly South

  Those Darn Squirrels and the Cat Next Door

  Those Darn Squirrels!

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by G. P. Putnam’s Sons,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2022

  Copyright © 2022 by Adam Rubin

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Rubin, Adam, 1983- author. | Salmieri, Daniel, 1983- illustrator. | Santoso, Charles, illustrator. | Liniers, 1973- illustrator. | Hughes, Emily (Emily M.), illustrator. | Miles, Nicole, illustrator. | Miller, Seaerra, illustrator.

  Title: The ice cream machine / Adam Rubin ; illustrated by Daniel Salmieri, Charles Santoso, Liniers, Emily Hughes, Nicole Miles, Seaerra Miller.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2022] | Audience: Ages 10 & up |

  Summary: “A collection of six short stories in a variety of genres and settings, all featuring ice cream”—Provided by publisher. | Identifiers: LCCN 2021018388 (print) | LCCN 2021018389 (ebook)| ISBN 9780593325797 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593325810 (epub)

  Subjects: CYAC: Ice cream—Fiction. | Humorous stories. | LCGFT: Short stories. | Humorous fiction. | Classification: LCC PZ7.R83116 Ic 2022 (print) | LCC PZ7.R83116 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018388

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021018389

  Ebook ISBN 9780593325810

  Cover art © 2022 by John Hendrix

  Cover design by Eileen Savage

  Design by Eileen Savage, adapted for ebook by Michelle Quintero

  Geometric background image courtesy of Shutterstock.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  For T, la estrella fugaz de mi cuento favorito. Te amo.

  Any object observed from a fixed viewpoint offers infinite possible interpretations.

  —Professor Kokichi Sugihara,

  doctor of engineering, Meiji University

  Writing Is Magic

  Howdy! It’s me, Adam. I wrote this book.

  Well, technically, I typed this book into a laptop, but all the same, here we are now, you and I together, on this very word.

  Strange, right? It’s almost as if these sentences have formed some mystical, telepathic connection directly from my brain to yours. You are reading my mind right now, and I, in turn, have you hypnotized.

  I can prove it: Imagine a dog eating a diaper.

  You couldn’t help it, could you? As long as you’re reading my words, you’re under my spell. That’s the thing they never mentioned when they made me practice lowercase z’s between the dotted lines. Back then, I thought writing was boring and useless and difficult, but now I know better.

  Writing is magic.

  For example, imagine you recently painted a bench in the middle of the park and you need to make sure no one sits on that bench before the paint dries.

  You could stand there all day, shooing people away, or you could write Wet Paint on a big piece of paper, gently set your writing on the bench, and saunter off to get a snack.

  Booyah! You cast a no-sitting spell on that bench. This particular anti-butt spell is so powerful, it can prevent people from sitting someplace even if that place has not been painted recently . . . but I would never suggest you use your magical powers for mischief.

  Here’s a good one: Write I love you on a piece of paper, sign it, and slip it into your mom’s coat pocket when she’s not looking.

  Blammo! You just traveled into the future. Someday (no one knows exactly when), your mom will find that paper, open it up, and melt into a jiggling puddle of warm fuzzies while she thinks about how sweet and considerate you are. I promise she will let you know when she finds that note and she’ll tell you how happy it made her, and if you ask for a present that day, you’ll very likely get it.

  I’m telling you: Writing is magic. It allows your thoughts to escape your body and go venturing off into the world on their own. Writing lets you capture an idea like a genie in a lamp. It sits there, waiting until someone comes along to read the words, then—boom—your idea explodes in the mind of a total stranger!

  This is an ancient kind of magic. There are writers who’ve been dead for centuries and we’re still talking about their ideas to this day.

  For example, more than twenty-five hundred years ago, a Chinese writer named Lao Tzu said: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

  Pretty deep, right? That’s an idea that stands the test of time. I mention it here because it’s as true about writing as it is about walking.

  Staring at a blank page has stopped many would-be writers from ever getting started. Even for me (professional writer guy), a blank page sometimes scares me into thinking I’ll never have another idea in my life.

  But the truth is, everybody has ideas. Not just writers. Firefighters, doctors, shoemakers, treasure hunters—it’s hard for any human being to go through their day without having at least one idea. The tricky part is giving yourself permission to think that your idea is a good idea. Some people have the opposite problem: They think all their ideas are good ideas. These people often go into politics.

  Maybe I can help eliminate the pressure of coming up with a “good idea” the next time you feel like writing a story. An idea is really just an excuse to get started anyway. It doesn’t need to be some groundbreaking concept like electromagnetism or democracy or SpongeBob SquarePants, it just needs to be something that tickles your brain. Something that makes you go “Oooh.”

  Look at the words on the front of this book: The Ice Cream Machine.

  Doesn’t that sound like a good idea for a story? I thought so. I thought it sounded like a good idea for lots of different stories frankly, and to prove it, I wrote six. Each story is totally different. The only thing they have in common is their title. Actually, they have a half a dozen little wormholes in common too, but I’ll let you discover those on your own.

  I had a lot of fun writing these stories, and I hope you’ll have fun reading them, but my real hope is that this book might serve as encouragement for aspiring young writers to create their own versions of “The Ice Cream Machine.”

&nbs
p; If so, I left a few tips in the back of the book for how to get started. I’ve also included my mailing address. Someday soon, it could be me reading your words.

  Write whatever you want. Anything you can imagine, you can put in your story. If you want to eat ten thousand pizzas, you can. If you want to play basketball on the moon, you can. If you want to turn into a giant monster or ride an octopus or travel back in time, you can do that too.

  And here’s the most magical part: No matter how ridiculous, how outrageous, how downright impossible the things you make up are, once you put them in writing, they become real for whoever reads them. The people, places, and things that you plucked from thin air suddenly exist in someone else’s imagination.

  So here we go. You’re about to enter a universe of my own invention. Multiple universes, in fact. If things go well, the time you spend in my multiverse might make you smile. If things go very well, you might laugh or gasp or even cry!

  How incredible is that? Little black squiggles on paper, when placed in a certain order—when “spelled” correctly—gain powers. Writing enchants you to see things and feel things that don’t really exist.

  What else can you call it but magic?

  Contents

  I. The Ice Cream Machine

  (the one with the five-armed robot)

  II. The Ice Cream Machine

  (the one with the ice cream eating contest)

  III. The Ice Cream Machine

  (the one with the genius inventor)

  IV. The Ice Cream Machine

  (the one with the evil ice cream man)

  V. The Ice Cream Machine

  (the one with the sorcerer’s assistant)

  VI. The Ice Cream Machine

  (the one with the alien space lab)

  VII. The Ice Cream Machine

  (the one that hasn’t been written yet)

  I

  The Ice Cream Machine

  (the one with the five-armed robot)

  illustrated by

  DANIEL SALMIERI

  A glimmering blue streak rocketed through the air above Megalopolis, weaving between skyscrapers, ducking below streams of flying hoverpods, and blasting through holographic advertisements just for fun. Excitement spread throughout the city as ordinary citizens identified the flying object overhead.

  “Hey, look! It’s Shiro and Kelly,” said a man selling digital tacos on a street corner. He waved up at the sky to greet the famous duo.

  “Shiro and Kelly.” An old woman on a park bench chuckled as she adjusted her cybergoggles. “Off on another exciting adventure, I bet.”

  “I wish I had a superbot,” said a kid staring out the window while feeding his dead goldfish.

  Before long, Shiro Hanayama and his robot best friend/tutor/bodyguard, Kelly, reached their destination: the Hanayama Robotics Corporation, a two-hundred-story building covered in lush bioluminescent greenery, which towered over the sprawling cityscape that had once been known as Los Angeles.

  A landing pad extended from the building, and Kelly touched down gently in the center. Shiro climbed out from inside the robot, yawned, and brushed the jet-black hair from his forehead. He was pale and chubby but had his father’s handsome features and his mother’s fierce, intelligent eyes. He wore a flight suit with a helmet, bright-pink sneakers, and a backpack.

  Shiro stretched his arms over his head. “It’s getting tight in there.”

  “If you don’t like it,” replied Kelly, “stop growing.”

  Kelly adjusted her configuration. In flight mode, she resembled a squid: five thin arms positioned at the bottom of her squat, egg-shaped body, ionic thrusters blasting from the tip of each three-pronged claw.

  In casual mode, four of her limbs reconfigured into more traditional arm and leg positions, while the fifth moved around according to her mood: Sometimes it sat coiled atop her head like hair, sometimes it swished behind her back like a tail, and sometimes it moved to the front of her body to assist with tasks that required three hands.

  Kelly’s limbs were dark and dull in color, but her body was iridescent, like the glimmering wings of a blue butterfly. She was built from indestructible bioengineered materials, covered in armored scales (like a pineapple), immune to microwave attacks, and completely bulletproof (unlike a pineapple).

  A series of quantum processors gave her the capacity for independent thought. She was bubbly, funny, and kind, with an IQ of 250.

  Kelly was famously considered to be the most advanced robot on Earth. Her groundbreaking technology was highly coveted by government spies and rival corporations, but despite their best efforts, the superbot’s mysterious power source remained top secret.

  Shiro’s mom, Professor Hanayama, had designed Kelly to help care for and protect her son.

  The professor was tall and thin, with big, penetrating eyes, a small mouth, and an asymmetrical haircut that had been dyed snow white. She always dressed in gray from head to toe, with a single fresh-cut flower tucked into her lapel for a touch of color.

  Professor Hanayama ran one of the largest corporations in the solar system, leading the innovation of bio-quantum technology and working tirelessly to protect what little remained of Earth’s natural resources. It was a very demanding job, which meant she didn’t get to spend much time with Shiro. They had planned to have breakfast together before she left for work that morning, but Shiro had overslept. Again.

  When Professor Hanayama noticed her son and his robot outside her office on the landing pad, she paused her presentation and glowered at them through the window. Shiro pleaded with his hands, miming an apology. His mother turned back to the national ambassadors gathered around the table in the conference room, excused herself, and stepped outside.

  “Good morning, Professor,” Kelly said, bowing.

  “Good morning, Kelly,” said Professor Hanayama as she gave Shiro an angry hug.

  “Good morning, Mom,” Shiro mumbled with his face smooshed against her chest.

  “It would have been a better morning if you had shown up for breakfast like we’d planned.”

  “Ow, Mom, you’re squeezing too tight!” Professor Hanayama let go, and Shiro breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m really sorry. I was up late, and I couldn’t find my new sneakers this morning, and—”

  “Save it, Shiro,” said Professor Hanayama. “I’m giving you one last chance. But if you dare break your poor mother’s heart again tomorrow, I swear I will send you to the Mars colony to live with your father.”

  “But the only reason I—”

  “I don’t have time for any more excuses.” Professor Hanayama adjusted the orchid in her lapel and walked back inside.

  “You should have woken me up,” Shiro muttered under his breath.

  “You made me pinky-promise not to!” Kelly protested. “I believe your exact words were ‘I don’t need you to babysit me; I can take care of myself.’ ”

  Shiro grumbled, “I can, you know.”

  He pulled a kendama from his backpack.

  Kendama is an old Japanese skill game involving a ball attached by a string to a handle shaped like a cross. The handle has three small cups for catching the ball and a single spike that perfectly fits the hole drilled into the ball. Kendama is a great way to demonstrate dexterity and coordination. Shiro liked the game because it was one of the few amusements left in the world that didn’t require any electricity. He whipped the red ball on the string around in his hands.

  FWIP, FWIP!

  He flipped the kendama around his back, under his leg, and into the air. He spun in a circle, caught the handle, and speared the ball on top.

  FWIP, FWIP, FOOOOWIP, TOK!

  It almost looked like an ice cream cone.

  “Hey,” Kelly said, impressed, “that gives me an idea. Let’s call JoJo.”

  Shiro smiled. “
You always know how to cheer me up.”

  The robot sent out a beacon, and they both sat down, legs dangling over the edge of the landing pad, to wait for the ice cream man to arrive.

  * * *

  —

  Thousands of flying vehicles zipped through the smog that blanketed Megalopolis and obscured Shiro and Kelly’s view of the ground, two hundred stories below. In the distance, a single wobbling object appeared to disrupt the orderly streams of automated shipping drones and robo-taxis that glided along in perfect harmony.

  “Watch your butts, you dang auto-pods,” yelled JoJo as he shook his fist. JoJo’s was one of the few manual vehicles still in operation in the city. Across the side of it was painted jojo’s old-fashioned ice cream. The pod hovered up the side of the building and landed with a crunch behind Shiro and Kelly.

  JoJo was a gruff man with a thick neck and a heavy mustache. He lifted his cap to stroke his bald head.

  “All righty, then.” JoJo grabbed his ice cream scoop with a meaty hand. “What can I get my two favorite customers today?”

  “I will take three triple cones,” Kelly said. “Chocolate/strawberry/peanut butter, hazelnut/vanilla/pistachio, and cherry/coconut/fudge chunk.” Kelly’s display visor flashed with excitement. “Please.”

  “You got it, boss.” JoJo popped open the cooler.

  Shiro retrieved the tablet from his backpack and consulted a detailed chart as he considered JoJo’s colorful menu board.

  “Hmm,” said Shiro. “I’ve tried all of these flavors at least three times.”

  “Yeah,” Kelly said as she held up a triple-scoop cone. “That’s because JoJo makes the best ice cream in Megalopolis.” A hole in her hull whirled open like the shutter of a camera, and she tossed one of the frozen treats inside. Her display visor sparkled with delight.

  “Thank you, Kelly,” said JoJo as he tipped his hat. “Take it from the superbot, kid.”