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Luckily, Iggy's partner-in-crime, Karen, boasts kung fu skills that are impressive even to the extraterrestrials. But when frequency feuding goes from bad to worse, the two begin to wonder if kung fu kicks and sweet talk will be enough to fuel their escape. There's only one way to find out...
We were sitting in mud.
Warm, wet mud that was currently soaking through the seat of my pants. As if our clothes weren’t dirty enough already from the last frequency we had just visited—a place with no washing machines, but lots of creatures who were more than happy to try to kill us any time of the day or night.
Karen and I looked around in a daze, realizing we weren’t back home like we thought we would be. No, we were in the middle of what I would have to call “nowhere.” I call it “nowhere” because it was completely empty.
No mountains. No hills. No trees. No plants. No grass. No buildings. No people. No creatures. No things. Nothing. It was just an endless flat world as far as we could see, like some huge broom had come down from the sky and swept everything off the face of the earth. The air was hot and muggy, and the sky was filled with big scary-looking black clouds.
I looked over at Karen, my sixteen-year-old hot-headed, kung fu–fighting friend. She was staring at this new deserted world with the same look she might have if she’d walked into a room expecting it to be filled with people she liked and food she loved but instead it was filled with all the kids from school who hated her and all the food she couldn’t stand and it turned out it was a Let’s-Beat-up-the-Person-Who-Just-Walked-in-the-Room party.
Karen and I looked back to see if the frequency transporter that had brought us here was still behind us. As soon as we did, the machine glowed bright white and then disappeared with a really low-pitched THUMP that made my ears pop.
“Oh, man… ” was about all I could say. Because without that transporter, it sure seemed like we were trapped in another frequency.
Again.
See, in case you didn’t know or don’t remember, Karen and I had just escaped from a different frequency. We had both ended up in that frequency because of explosions we had been in back home that had knocked us into the frequency next to ours. Oh, and in case you’re really behind on what the whole “frequency” thing means, I’m talking about different realities that exist in the same physical space.
You know, sort of like how a radio has a bunch of different stations inside it that you can select by changing the number on the dial? Or how your computer has tons of different websites inside it that show up if you type in the right address? The stations and websites all come out of the same radio and computer, but each thing that comes out is different. And it’s the same thing with frequencies.
The frequency we had just left was filled with lots of weird animal-like creatures who had been ruled by this former English teacher from my school, a guy named Chester Arthur who had also ended up in that same frequency because of an explosion. Mr. Arthur had gone kind of nuts and turned into a dictator who tried to make the creatures do everything he wanted them to do. But then they all ended up rebelling against him and chasing him and this other guy named Herbert Golonski, who was trying to steal their gold, out of their frequency. And when Karen and I got into Mr. Arthur and Herbert Golonski’s frequency-jumping machine to follow them back to what we assumed was going to be our home frequency, we ended up here….
Sitting in mud, in a deserted frequency that definitely wasn’t our home, with no sign of Mr. Arthur or Herbert Golonski.
…rrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRUMMM-MMBBBBLLLL-LLLLLLLe…o
Distant thunder rolled over our heads like a big bowling ball going down an alley in the clouds. We then heard what sounded like an audience applauding. But it wasn’t an audience. It was a major wall of rain heading across the empty landscape right toward us.
“Oh, no…” was all Karen could get out before the wall of rain hit us and swallowed us up, immediately drenching us. Actually, I think she said “oh, bleep,” but like I said when I told you my last adventure, I don’t think the super important things I’ve done as a Frequenaut should be filled with profanity. So I’ll just go with “oh, no” and leave it at that.
The rain was hot and came down hard in huge painful drops. We jumped up to run for cover but quickly realized that there was nowhere to run to. There was no possible shelter in any direction for as far as either one of us could see. There was only flat barren ground that was now quickly turning into mud.
As we got soaked by the rain, Karen looked at me and I could see she wanted to shout, “C’mon, let’s go!” But since there was no place we could go, we both just sort of stood there staring at each other like two stunned zombies. The only good part of all this was we were getting the much-needed hosing down we both required after having run and fought and sweated and crawled through dirt tunnels in the last frequency. But that sure didn’t make it feel any better, especially since it’s not really too much fun taking a shower with all your clothes on.
“What do we do?” I yelled to her over the sound of the pounding rain, which was as loud as standing in the middle of a cheering crowd at a football game.
Karen glanced around, then stared at me with a look I’d never really seen on her face before—a look of total confusion.
“I have no idea,” she said quietly.
And neither did I.
Excerpted from Ignatius MacFarland 2: Frequency Freak-out! by Feig, Paul Copyright © 2010 by Feig, Paul. Excerpted by permission.
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Anonymous
Posted October 6, 2011
It is a great cant miss book it has adventure and a lot of action in it , soif you like action packed books this is the one for you. It is a great bookk read it now --fred
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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Posted December 19, 2012
My 10 year old son really enjoys this book series, he is a bit of a reluctant reader and these books hold his interest with the right amount of adventure and 10 year old boy humor!
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Posted March 16, 2012
Best book ever
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Posted July 13, 2010
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Overview
Luckily, Iggy's partner-in-crime, Karen, boasts kung fu skills that are impressive even to the extraterrestrials. But when frequency feuding goes from bad to worse, the two begin to wonder if kung fu kicks and ...