The Class Clone: Early Reader 7-8 Age Category

The Class Clone

Katie, Jess and Cassie Suspect the new kid in class is too perfect to be real and come to the rescue of 5S once again, sabotaging an evil genius robot from stealing their identities.

5079 Words

Chapters

Chapter 1: Beware the Teacher’s Pet

Chapter 2: Robot Fuel

Chapter 3: A genius… at snitching

Chapter 4: Cracking the code

Chapter 5: Where’s the off switch?

Chapter 6: Sparks Fly

Chapter 7: Beat him at his own game

Chapter 8: The virus is wiped!

The Class Clone: Synopsis

When a new kid joins class 5S, Katie and her friends Jess & Cassie suspect he’s not quite what he seems. Robert Erasmus’s love of brown sludge meal shakes, ability to ace every quiz and secret use of the caretaker’s laptop are evidence enough that must be an identity stealing evil robot on a mission to clone the class and take over the school. This is a job for the 5S Protection team and the girls devise a plan to debunk his evil mission.

First, they try to find his OFF button to give him a much needed ‘reboot’. However, when this plan fails they go for Plan B, soaking him with water to ruin his circuits, which leaves Robert Erasmus sent home in lost property shorts.

The next day when Robert fails to turn up to class the girls congratulate themselves on another successful 5S protection success. That is, until Robert’s face appears on all the schools iPads and none of the teacher’s laptops work. Cassie hears the caretaker’s dusty old laptop beeping and the girls realise… Robert’s in the computer.

It’s too late now, he’s got all the information about everyone in class, all the teachers and the whole school. The girls realise that the only way to beat him is at his own game. They challenge him to a drawing competition as Katie remembered this was the only class activity he would never take part in. Inside the computer, although he tries Robert isn’t as creative as the girls. All the school systems crash and they’ve saved the school once again!

For once the girls aren’t in trouble with the grownups. They’re too busy trying to work out the cyber-attack but as usual, they know the truth.

So, beware of that new super smart teacher’s pet in class – they might just be an evil genius robot on a mission to rule the school!

Chapter 1: Beware the Teacher’s Pet

Every class has a Teacher’s Pet. They’re the kid in class who’s extra good at EVERYTHING, especially everything the teacher wants you to do. Since Year 1 Michael Fischer had been the 5S class teacher’s pet. He was super annoying, always a goodie two shoes and a total weasel!

That was until we met Robert Erasmus. He joined 5S half way through the Spring term. We’d not had a new boy in the class before and all the girls, including our friend Cassie, chased him around the playground and sent him love letters. Paul Simmonds and James Dennie had an argument about who was his best friend and Shalika gave him two paintings she’d done of cats.

Will you be my boyfriend? Tick Yes or No X Love Cassie

At first he seemed pretty normal, apart from the fact that he was really, and I mean REALLY smart. More of a brain box than Bradley Crown. In his first Math class he beat Bradley in the division quiz which made Bradley MAD and made the rest of the class love the new kid even more – NOBODY was smarter than Bradley Crown.

From that moment on, Miss Ellis looked like she’d won the lottery and every time she saw Robert she smiled and patted him on the back for whatever gold star 100% test mark he got that day. Mum said it was just because he was ‘new to the school’ so he’d get extra attention for a while but that didn’t make sense because Mr Baxter who taught Year 2 with the crusty nose hairs was also ‘new to the school’ but the other teachers ignored him.

And that was the difference between crusty-nosed Mr Baxter and brain-box Robert Erasmus… before Robert, I didn’t believe anybody could ever be THAT perfect. It was totally impossible. Well totally impossible if you were human...

Chapter 2: Robot Fuel

On Friday morning Miss Ellis introduced us all to the new boy who would be joining 5S. ‘Class, this is Robert Erasmus, I want you all to make him feel very welcome’ she said.

I whispered to Jess that a Friday was a WEIRD day to start a new school as the week was nearly ending but Jess said it was probably because school lunches on Fridays are the BEST. It made sense. Most Friday’s we have fish and chips and apple crumble with custard. Two of my favourites all rolled into one. They’re so good that Jess, Cassie and I ALWAYS smile at Mrs Shrimpton the dinner lady to get extras on a Friday. It never works though. She just smiles and says ‘move along now children’ when we hold out our plates.

Robert sat next to Michael Fischer and everyone stared at him all through Maths and Art class until finally at morning break, they could talk to him.

Jess, me and Cassie decided not to run straight over in the playground – everyone had already got their first and he looked like he was being attacked by zombies rather than making new friends. ‘I feel sorry for him’ said Cassie ‘Must be hard being the new kid and everyone being all around you like that’. Having that much attention was Cassie’s worst nightmare, it made her shiver just thinking about it. We agreed we’d say hello at lunch instead.

Lunch time came, and we all sat in the lunch hall dipping our chips into a bowl of ketchup in the middle of the table when James Dennie asked where Robert Erasmus was. We all looked at each other and realised he was right. That’s WEIRD I thought.

Then Cassie said that maybe he’s missed lunch because he’s a really loud chewer, so he has to go in another room to eat like her dad has to do when its spaghetti for tea because her mum says watching him makes her feel ill. I said I’d never heard of that before and that my dad even burps as he eats, and he’s still allowed at the dinner table.

Then Shalika said that maybe he didn’t know where the lunch hall was and that maybe he was lost and starving. All the girls looked worried, but Jess still didn’t think that was right. She said the lunch hall is the biggest building in school and you could smell the apple crumble cooking from the other side of the playground. Robert Erasmus could follow his nose just like that run-away dog did who came and ate all the sausages one Thursday when the dinner ladies were setting up.  

After Jess had finished her last mouthful of custard we went to find him. Cassie asked Mrs Shrimpton for a spare crumble and ice cream for Robert even through I said he’d never want it unless it had custard on it and we went to find the new boy.

We searched the playground first and then the 5S class room, but he wasn’t in either of those places. Cassie said he might have actually ‘wasted away’ and vanished from not eating anything for so long. Her mum said that was something that could really happen if you didn’t eat all your dinner. Jess and I said we couldn’t be sure as we ALWAYS ate ours… and seconds.

Then, as we turned the corner to our head teacher Mrs Mole’s office, we saw him. He was sitting on the seats outside her room holding something strange. As we walked closer Mrs Mole must have heard us coming and poked her head out from behind the door. “Can I help you girls?” she asked. We told her we’d gone looking for Robert to keep him company at lunch and she seemed happy enough with that answer and left us alone again.

“What’s that you’re drinking?” said Jess “It’s a weird colour isn’t it?”.

He was half way through drinking a WEIRD milkshake like the ones my mum made at home with the left overs in our fridge – they never tasted nice. “It’s my lunch. It’s got all my macro and micro nutrients, so my body can work at its best.’ He said, and Cassie held out the apple crumble for him, but he shook his head.   

‘My mum says my body is a machine and it needs to be charged properly” said Robert taking a large gulp of the brown sludge. He said his mum made it for him every day and that he wasn’t allowed school dinners like the other children because he wasn’t like the other children.

We didn’t have much to say about that and none of us were really that sure what a ‘nutrient’ actually was anyway, but one thing was for certain, we all agreed he couldn’t be human to drink that car oil.

Chapter 3: A genius… at snitching

On Monday, Miss Ellis was late to morning register. She said she had problems with her car again, something my dad has all the time which means that you can’t find your car keys.

Without a teacher in class Paul Simmonds started running around the room scaring Becca Moore with a dead spider he found under his desk. Jess and I laughed lots because Becca Moore is mean and deserved a spider in her hair. James Dennie thought it was funny too and started jumping up and down on his chair. Then Peter Pike, who is ALWAYS class look-out shouted that Miss Ellis was coming and everyone was sat back in their chairs as if nothing happened when she walked in.

We thought we’d got away with it when suddenly the new kid’s hand went straight up and he reeled off names like a computer, “Paul Simmonds, Becca Moore, Jess Mott, Katie Edwards and James Dennie were being naughty before you came in and Peter Pike was keeping watch, so you didn’t see. That equals 1 gold star taken from their star chart doesn’t it Miss Ellis?”

Miss Ellis said it was for her to decide what punishment the children would get but thanked Robert for his ‘honestly’. ‘What a little teacher’s pet!’ said Jess as half the class missed morning break as punishment whilst everyone else went to the playground. I said that not even Michael Fischer would snitch like that and Jess looked at me the way she does when she’s starting to get an idea in her head.

That afternoon we had Math class. It’s my worst subject and I wasn’t looking forward to it because it was long division. But at least this time I wasn’t the only one struggling as everyone found Miss Ellis’s long division quiz really difficult that day. Bradley Crown, the smartest in class had to put up his hand for help and everything.

After the quiz was over, we swapped papers and marked each other’s work. The room was silent as we all tried to work out how Miss Ellis had got 38.4 as the answer for question 10 when Michael Fischer gasped and made everyone look up. ‘The, the new kids got EVERY answer right’ he said his eyes wide open in disbelief. ‘No way!’ shouted Becca Moore from the back, ‘Even Bradley’s got 1 wrong!’.

Cassie glanced over at me with that face she does just before she knows something scary is about to happen and I knew she was thinking the same thing. There’s something WEIRD about Robert Erasmus.

On the walk home Jess and I ran though what we new about this new kid so far. ‘So he’s like a genius, he speaks and acts really weird, he’s a snitch and he doesn’t eat human food’ said Jess listing them off on her fingers. Instantly a shiver went down my back and a scary thought came into my head. ‘Maybe that’s because he isn’t human’ I whispered. I told her about this TV programme I’d seen where super smart robots that look just like humans try to take over the world. 

“Well, there’s one thing I do know” she said, “If he is a robot, he’s definitely not a friendly one”.

That evening Jess, Cassie and I talked over group chat and decided we should keep a close eye on the new kid. We were the 5S Protection Team after all.  Jess typed that she thought it was extra FREAKY that he’d called his body a ‘machine’ and Cassie typed that maybe he really was a robot in disguise and that’s why he was so clever. I said that some robots can be nice but that I didn’t get the feeling that Robert Erasmus was a very nice robot – he’d already snitched on half the class. I said we should investigate robots, just to be safe.

Chapter 4: Cracking the code

The next day at morning break we hid in our den under the slide whilst Jess showed us one of her brother’s books. It said that robots were ‘machines that do tasks without the help of a person’ but that ‘robots can only do what a person has built them to do’. I said that maybe Robert’s mum had built him as she was the one feeding him the car oil. Cassie said that his mum may have ‘programmed’ him. She’d asked her dad about robots and he’d said that robots are programmed using computers and do dangerous things like going deep under water or taking photos in space. ‘Dangerous things?’ said Jess. We didn’t like the sound of that. We couldn’t think of any dangerous things that needed doing in Class 5S. Cassie started to get fidgety and Jess and I knew she was getting scared. I said we needed more PROOF before we could decide anything.

I’d brought my spy kit which said that we should ‘get underneath the skin of the suspect’ so Cassie, Jess and me went to question him. He was sitting ABSOLUTELY still on the school bench while all the other kids ran around him like crazy. “I think he’s in sleep mode” whispered Cassie.

“Hi Robert” said Jess loudly “So, erm, what do you like doing for fun? Do you play any online games?”.

He blinked lots before answering. “I’m not allowed technology, it interferes with my learning.” He said, “but I’m super, super smart though, better than all of you and I could beat you at any game anyway, it wouldn’t be worth playing.”

Jess pulled a face. Robert Erasmus was gruesome.

Suddenly the school bell rang and saved us from any more of Robert’s annoying replies. “That’s so weird that he doesn’t have ANY technology. Like not even a tablet” said Jess on the walk back to the classroom. I agreed and said that it was probably because he IS the technology so any other tech going near him would mess with his signal like with mobile phones. I said that maybe he was so smart because he could get WIFI in his ACTUAL BRAIN, so he could just get all the answers online.

It was only when we got back into the class room that we noticed how pale Cassie had gone. She was shivering and biting her nails at the same time. “What’s wrong?” we asked her. She explained that when Robert had been talking about being the greatest at games it had reminded her of this amazing computer called Deep Blue that had beaten the world’s best Chess champion. “Well, we know he’s not on our side, and, if he’s as smart as that robot” she said, “he could take over the school”.

It wasn’t until afternoon Art class that things got even scarier. Miss Ellis made everyone work in pairs and I got paired with Bradley Crown which, although he’s super smart, was bad luck as he’s rubbish at art. But not as bad luck as Jess, who got paired with Robert Erasmus to draw a detailed copy of the Eiffel Tower. Robert said it was too easy for him and refused to pick up his colouring pencils. Jess isn’t the sort of girl who puts up with grumpy art partners so said she wasn’t starting if he didn’t and in the end both of them were asked by a very red-faced Miss Ellis to go explain themselves to Mrs Mole.

Yet on the way there Robert did something that was VERY un-teacher’s-pet like… he disappeared. Jess said she’d been telling him to hurry up along to corridor because he kept dragging behind her and then she looked around and he’d VANISHED!

She’d thought about just carrying straight on to Mrs Mole but instead she said her ‘spy instincts’ kicked in which meant she sensed that something non-human was happening. She searched the empty cupboards and the cloakroom until she found him sat at a dusty laptop at the back of Mr Potter the caretaker’s office.

As she watched through a crack in the door she said that he looked more like he was plugged into the laptop than just sat at it. Robert was ‘fixated’ by the screen which she said is what her mum says about her brother when the wrestling is on TV and totally ignores her. Robert Erasmus had plugged some sort of USB into the laptop was typing super quick.

On the walk home from school Jess was really quiet. My mum says she’s always worried if Jess is quiet for too long because it means she is planning something.

“I’ve got it!” she said, “he’s using the laptop to get information about all of us”.

She said she’d seen it before in a film where they replaced people with robot copies of them called clones. The clones did and said whatever they wanted. “He’s doesn’t like any of us in 5S, he’s on the teacher’s side and he’s robot smart. If he can turn us all into clones he’ll have the class just how he wants it”

I said that he was probably using the laptop to get all our personal information like our test marks, parents names and addresses so he can make the clones as real as possible. I shivered at the thought. “If he does make a clone… then what happens to the real person?” I said, even though I already knew the answer wouldn’t be a good one. “He’ll get rid of them Katie” said Jess “and we can’t let that happen”.

Jess called an emergency 5S Protection Team meeting that evening.