Future Ratboy and the Attack of the Killer Robot Grannies. Jim Smith

      bleeped MAVIS 3000, her mouth not moving.

      ‘So where are my mum and dad and little sister?’ I said, peering past her into the hallway. Usually our hallway is filled up with trainers and coats and tennis balls and things like that. Now it was just an empty metal tube with flashing buttons on the walls.

      MAVIS 3000 opened a little door on her square, metal belly and stuck her claw-hand in, pulling out a mug. ‘NICE CUP OF TEA?’ she bleeped, pouring a sip’s worth into her non-closing mouth. ‘MMM,’ she pinged, like my mum’s microwave, and a cloud of tea steam hissed out of her nostrils and into my face.

      ‘DIVE FOR COVER!’ I shouted in my superhero voice, not diving for cover at all. My scuba mask had misted up from all the tea steam, and I backed away down the path, bumping into the green plastic wheelie bin I’d just jumped out of.

      Bird fluttered out of the bin. ‘WAAAHHH!’ he screeched, peering up at MAVIS 3000, and he flew through the air towards me and tucked himself under my arm.

      I glanced down at Bird, forgetting about the crazy robot granny for a millisecond, and wiped the tea steam off my scuba mask.

      ‘Something weird’s going on here,’ I mumbled, poking Bird’s fat furry belly, and he squawked. ‘Bird doesn’t ruffle his fur . . . or fly through the air . . . or squawk when you poke his belly!’

      I peered into Bird’s shiny plastic eyes, and they blinked. ‘YOU’RE NOT BIRD!’ I shouted.

      screeched Bird, copying what I’d just said, and I was just about to pinch myself to see if I was dreaming, when I heard MAVIS 3000 clip-clopping down the path towards me.

      ‘FANCY A BISCUIT?’ she bleeped, towering above us like a lamppost, which is my second name in case you forgot. A chocolate digestive whirred out of a slot in her belly and she pincered it with her claw and slid it into her mouth. ‘YUMMY,’ she bleeped, and a crunching sound blurted out of the little speaker on her chest.

      You know when you chomp on a chocolate digestive and the crumbs start flying out of your mouth? That’s what was happening now. Except that the crumbs flying out of MAVIS 3000’s mouth were zooming towards my face like billions of tiny bullets. ‘ARRGGHH!’ screamed a flower sticking out of the front lawn, as a crumb shot through one of its petals. Which was weird, because I’d never heard a flower scream before.

      ‘OOf !’ groaned a snail, its shell exploding from a biscuity bullet.

      ‘Operation Don’t Get Hit By A Chocolate Digestive Crumb!’ I cried, diving into the wheelie bin with Not Bird. My house was on a hilly road, and I’d always wondered what it’d be like to roll down it - NOW WAS MY CHANCE!

      ‘Let’s get the uncoolness out of here!’ I screamed, as the bin began to move and we zoomed down the slope towards Shnozville High Street.

      

      The bin crashed to a stop and I crawled out. We’d bumped into a pair of legs with yellow trainers on the end of them. The trainers hovered a centimetre off the pavement, which was lucky, because underneath them was a worm going for his morning stroll.

      ‘Hey, your bin just crashed into my legs!’ shouted the owner of the legs, who was an angry-looking lady with a see-through TV screen floating in front of her face. She wasn’t actually even looking at me, she was more staring at her screen.

      ‘Good morning! It’s Sunkeels the two-hundred-and-seventeenth of Plurgtember, Eight Million and Twelve, and this is today’s news . . .’ said the man on the screen.

      ‘Sunkeels?’ I said, looking around at Shnozville High Street.

      The buildings were about a hundred and seventeen times taller and shinier than I remembered, and the cars floated more than usual. ‘What’s a Sunkeels?’ I said. ‘And what was all that about it being Eight Million and Twelve?’

      The lady looked down at me, her eyes turning from angry to scared.

      ‘RAAAT!’ she screamed, which was weird seeing as I was Colin Lamppost, not a rat, and she zoomed off in her hover-trainers.

      Not Bird floated out of the bin and landed on the pavement. ‘Not Bird, there seems to be a problem,’ I said in my superhero voice. ‘I think we might’ve been zapped into the future!’ I cried, pointing around at how shiny and futuristic Shnozville High Street had become.

      ‘NOT!’ chirped Not Bird, pecking at a dried-up blob of pink bubblegum, and the blob twitched, slithering off to find a quieter bit of pavement.

      ‘You see!’ I said, pointing at the blob. ‘You’d never get a bit of bubblegum doing something like that in the old days!’

      Not Bird looked up at me and tilted his eyebrows into their scared positions.

      I said.

      Then I realised he was looking at whatever was behind me.

      

      ‘HELLO DEAR,’ bleeped a familiar robotty voice, and I turned round to see MAVIS 3000 standing there with another robot granny.

      She was fatter than MAVIS 3000 and had neon-red lipstick zigzagged round her mouth. Dented into her metal skirt in scary-looking capitals was the name ‘DOREEN XL97-220’.

      Both the robot grannies were carrying handbags and pulling old granny shopping trollies, except unlike normal old granny shopping trollies, these ones floated – probably because we were in the future.

      ‘EEK!’ squeaked Not Bird’s bubblegum blob, trying to slither off a tiny bit faster, and MAVIS 3000 stomped her foot down on the pavement, spiking it to death with her clippy-cloppy heel. She held her shoe up to DOREEN XL97-220’s mouth and waggled her metal eyebrows.

      ‘OOH. TA VERY MUCH, MAVIS,’ bleeped DOREEN XL97-220, pincering the blob off MAVIS 3000’s heel with her jaggedy metal teeth and starting to chew.