Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs #2

Chapter 1: Brad’s Exploration

Brad’s family was going to move. Brad thought about leaving his best friend Rubean, and his mutual friends Aseneth and Samantha. They had always been there to play with or to ask about stuff. He didn’t really want to leave, but he was partly excited about moving to their own private island that was smack under the big A in Atlantic. It used to be called Chewandswallow (who knows why) but his dad was renaming it Bigaunder (Big-on-der). He thought it was a weird name because if you divided it into three words (Big A Under) it tells exactly where it is on the globe, under the Big A.

He got out of bed and jumped into the car. His mother and father took turns driving the long trip across the states toward the Atlantic Ocean where a ferry was waiting for them. They talked and laughed on the way there. When they boarded the ship, Brad noticed that the plaster on the high section of the ship’s side had pictures of hamburgers and clouds with orange juice pouring out of them.

Once they were comfortable in the ship’s port deck, he pulled out a copy of The Thesaurus on Scientists. He read the paragraph on Dr. Flint Lockwood. “Founder of a machine that converts the molecular structure of water into any type of food you want. It also has a timer on it so you can set what time you want the converting to take place. Flint was born at an ancient town of Chewandswallow, known as the Sardine Capital of the World.”

Brad called out, “Mom, dad, listen to this!” Brad repeated the stuff about Dr. Lockwood. His mother said curiously, “That’s nonsense Brad, but I sure wish it were true.” Then my dad said, trying to be funny, “We might just find some food fossils on the island.”

Once they got there, Brad went exploring. He arrived at a narrow slant of land that lead to a long stretch of rocky terrain. Brad started a sort of climb-walk movement up the diagonal land. He slipped on a green limestone and tumbled into darkness. He started sliding down and up on an unknown elevator. Once or twice he heard the sloshing of water.

He was dumped down into a foul smelling pit of rotten banana mush. He was sinking slowly. Brad tried to get out of the leftovers but he was surrounded on all sides by steel walls at least 8 feet up. Finally, Brad gave up, took a big breath of air, and plunged into the icky mush. He kicked as hard as he could, but unfortunately, he couldn’t hold his breath any longer. He gasped and took long, deep breaths. Wait! Breaths! He could breathe! He looked up and saw that his body had made a hole in the pool of gooey banana mush. He continued downward this time breathing as he went along.

Finally, his body seemed to use its own weight to slowly move him down, and eventually, he was deposited into a grey room filled with billions of green and blue lights. As he was admiring the lights, he slowly came back to focus and realized he was about to die on impact of the hard concrete. He waited for a while and then landed on something soft, like jell-o. He bounced off it and landed on his feet. He turned around to find that it was in fact jell-o. Brad was really getting bugged by all of the food around here. He bounced on it a couple of times, just for fun, and then jumped back onto the concrete.

Brad explored for a while. Then he shouted tentatively, “Anybody home?” Nobody answered. He continued and finally came upon a small hole. “This might be a way out!” he said to himself. He crawled through the opening and found himself in a room no bigger than the space on an open stage. The walls were made of worn down black marble, but the floor was covered in grass and green moss. But what really caught Brad’s attention was the strange machine in the center of the room.

It stood out from the rest of the room, even without the beauty of a brand new machine. It wasn’t hard to tell that it was old. Brad went up to the machine and studied it closer. It had a cone shaped top, a plate under a white blob with a hole in the bottom, and a pitcher of dirty water next to the machine on the table that the machine was laid on.

He saw a little green button and pushed it experimentally. A rumbling sound started as Brad backed away in terror. The F.L. (the sticker on the machine said F.L.) said robotically, “Need water!” Brad was deathly afraid of the F.L., but his curiosity got the better of him. He quietly crept towards the table. He grabbed the pitcher of water and hurriedly poured the water into the top of the cone.

The machine came to life with a huge blast of very loud whining. It yelled excitedly, “HAMburger!” Brad tripped backward and then quickly scrambled back onto his feet. He ran to the corner which he thought was probably the farthest away from the machine. He held his breath and waited.

Chapter 2: The Hamburger and the Hotdog

The white blob wriggled wildly. Brad yelled with all his might, “HELP!!!” But it was hopeless. First of all, nobody would be down here to hear him. Second of all, he couldn’t hear his own voice with the machine making such a racket.

The blob squeezed itself into the bottom of the F.L. and a couple of seconds later popped out with a dirty hamburger bun (The bottom one) sticking out at the bottom. The full hamburger slowly descended from the blob until it plopped onto the plate.

The hamburger was very dirty. Brad realized three things:
1) That the F.L. must have transferred the water into a hamburger.
2) The hamburger must be dirty since the water was dirty.
And the most important part…
3) F.L. must stand for Flint Lockwood, the person who created the machine that could turn water into food. (That machine must be right in front of him!!)

Brad was astonished by such a fictional machine that was actually real! He quickly surveyed the machine to see a little red switch on the back side of the F.L. He flipped it and the machine roared to life. In the same voice as when it said, “Hamburger” the F.L. yelled “Hotdog!” and replayed when it had made a hamburger, except that the hotdog came out from the white blob slightly faster than the hamburger. He tried a little orange button with black sprinkles, sort of like Halloween colors. The scene repeated and out popped a cupcake. He tried again and again and again.

The plate was now full of food like mashed potato mush, chocolate chips with cookie crumbs, frosting, cupcakes , and all sorts of things, even ice cream dripping off the edge of the plate.

Finally, he managed to press the right button. The machine went from loud to medium to soft to no noise. Brad hoisted it into a basket that used to have been full of rotten old food.

Chapter 3: Brad’s Despair

Brad carried the basket across a tiny stream, stretching as far as he could. He thought about drinking out of it, but when he leaned over to drink he saw it was dirty with rock particles that were in the middle of eroding.

He was hungry so he pressed the button that he had used before to turn the F.L. on. The F.L. made the now familiar sound as Brad pressed a small, greenish-brown button. He used the dirty stream water to make the F.L. work. Out popped a bit of lasagna, followed by the rest of it. The lasagna landed on the plate and partly in Brad’s mouth. Brad swallowed it then said, “Mmm mmm mmm. That was delicious!” Brad greedily devoured the rest of the lasagna.

Brad wasn’t hungry anymore but he still had a terrible thirst to quench. He had to get out of here, pronto. That’s when it hit him; he couldn’t get out! The banana chute was officially for going down, so was the slide even if he managed to get up the banana mush. Brad flung himself head first on some jello-o in despair.

Chapter 4: The Call of the Diamond

Looking him right in the face was a sparkly blue gem. “A sapphire,” he thought. He flipped the jell-o over and then picked the gem up. The moment he picked it up, a bright light shot out of the gem and hit a solar in a dark corner of the ceiling which activated a little piece of wall to move slightly. But not enough for him to squeeze through.

He started feeling hopeless and thirsty but then he got an idea. Brad went to each jell-o bed, took the diamond from underneath, and let the light shine on the solar. He did this repeatedly until the wall moved enough for him to get through. He found himself right at the bottom of the ledge that lead to the slide. Brad was very relieved to be out. Even though it had only been a day, it felt like a lifetime. He ran home to tell his parents about his strange adventure.

Epilogue

When Brad got home, he rushed into the living room where he found his mom and dad chatting about the house finances. Brad broke in and said, “LISTEN TO THIS!” Brad told them all about how he left home, found the F.L., and got home safely, trying to emphasize how brave he was using as much details as possible. The family used the F.L. for food every day, this time, with clean water.