“Actually, it all started with my dad’s dad, Fuzzwonker Senior. He owned a restaurant that specialized in noodles. It was called Seldoon. That’s “noodles” spelled backward. Seldoon had every kind of noodle imaginable, and I was a noodle experimenter from the start. I made all sorts of gizmos and gadgets that helped Fuzzwonker Senior create the best noodle dishes in town. We made the longest noodle in the history of the world—seven miles—which I ate in one sitting.”
“Impressive!” I said. We walked by a cave that led into blackness. I shivered, but Dr. Fuzzwonker kept going.
“When I got older, I went to mixing school, science school, eating school, and candy school. Then I dug a giant hole under our house and went straight to work on Fuzzwonker Fizz. I built a machine with a lot of dials and levers and buttons and tubes and called it the Fizzomatic.
“There are holes in the machine for dropping things inside like pogo sticks, golf balls, and bananas.”
“You do realize this all sounds crazy,” I said.
Dr. Fuzzwonker ignored me. He was on a roll.
“At first, things didn’t go so well. I added a lemon, a Frisbee, a Ping-Pong ball, and a fire hydrant to the Fizzomatic. I got a soda pop that tasted like an egg roll–flavored pancake.”
“Gross.”
“But the next day I added a lightbulb, a candy cane, a skateboard, and a watermelon and PA-RESTO: Out came a new flavor of soda! Unfortunately, that one tasted like a sandwich made of shag carpet.”
“Dad, this story is getting really weird.”
Dr. Fuzzwonker yelled. “Kids didn’t want soda that tasted like shag carpet. What was I missing? I redoubled my efforts. Snarfballs!”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“Then came the day when I produced a nine-second cherry-flavored burp, which I burped right into a tube that sent all sorts of burp data into a burp-analyzing computer. When I saw the information it produced, I knew I was ninety-nine percent finished with the first batch of Fuzzwonker Fizz.”
“What about that last one percent?” I asked.
“Ninety-nine ingredients were just right, but I couldn’t figure out the final item that would create the perfect soda pop. I tried a ballpoint pen, a basketball, and an electric guitar. None of them worked. That was when something miraculous happened.”
We came alongside some strange plant with all sorts of vines, and Dr. Fuzzwonker knelt down with a pair of toenail clippers and clipped a small leaf. He put it in his pocket.
“Don’t leave me hangin’!” I said. “What happened?”
“I used a dash of chili powder, which I didn’t hold out much hope for, and BAM! Instead of a beaker full of fizzy liquid, what came out of the Fizzomatic machine was . . . well, it was . . . it was alive!”
“Huh?” I said.
“It was Phil,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “Phil was a shape-shifting blob of goop covered in a thin layer of soft fur. It was the first fizzy creature to pop out of the Fizzomatic machine. He was orange.”
“Whoa, Dad. This is incredible!”
“Phil ate the container he had fallen into. He got a little bigger then, but not too much, and I thought it was a good trick. I would later discover that Phil could eat lots of things, like dirt and rocks.”
Dr. Fuzzwonker kept adding ingredients to the Fizzomatic machine, and each time he did, it produced another furry critter.
“I call them Fizzies,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said.
Even long after he had perfected the final Fuzzwonker Fizz recipe—those hundred perfect ingredients that could be flavored a hundred different ways—he kept on making Fizzies.
There were tall Fizzies and short Fizzies. They were yellow or lime green or a lot of other colors. Three Fizzies had polka dots; two of them had stripes.
You just never knew what kind of Fizzy the Fizzomatic was going to spit out next.
After a while, Dr. Fuzzwonker found himself with a hundred Fizzies hidden under the house. So he had Phil dig deeper and deeper and wider and wider, until one day . . .
“I’ve created a self-sustaining, subterranean, creature-containing world of my own . . . and it shall be called: FIZZOPOLIS!” Dr. Fuzzwonker shouted.
And that’s how Fizzopolis came into existence. Phil kept on digging and eating, making the habitat bigger and bigger. And some of the other strange creatures, especially the ones with lots of arms, helped Dr. Fuzzwonker build Fizzopolis.
By the time Dr. Fuzzwonker told me all this, we were standing in front of a swampy lagoon, where a slurping creature stood on the shore slurping up green water with a goop-sucking hose. The hose was also the creature’s nose.
“Hi, Franny,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “This is Harold. He’s the new assistant. Also my son.”
Franny smiled as she got bigger and bigger, like a balloon filling up, and then all the green water reversed direction like it was coming out of a fire hose.
It made a gloppity-gloop-gloop sound that’s probably one of the top three sounds I have ever heard. Franny lost control of her nose hose. The water jet, which had been turned from green to clean, pointed at me. It hit me like a cannonball, and I tumbled backward until I came to rest against one of the outer walls of Fizzopolis.
“Remember, Franny,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “You need to hold the nose hose first, then release. Let’s work on that.”
Franny made snurfing and snoodling noises and walked over to me. She took in a gigantic breath of air and aimed her nose hose at my head. When Franny let loose, it was like the dryer in a car wash, and I was plastered against the wall like a bug in a windstorm. I rolled around like a marble in a tornado, and when she finished, my hair was standing straight up on my head.
“This is the best day in the history of my life!” I yelled.
“Sorry for soaking you,” Franny said. She had a watery sort of voice, like she was plugging her nose hose. She mumbled instructions to herself. “First I hold on to the nose hose, then I blast the swamp. It’s a lot to remember.”
“How about if I help you with that?” I offered. “Let’s try it again.”
And so we did, but this time, I held her nose like a fire hose and everything went swimmingly.
“The lagoon needs cleaning twice a week,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “That means all the water must be turned from green to clean. Think you two can handle it?”
Franny blew her nose in the air, which made a honking sound like a goose, and then she nodded and smiled.
“We got this, Dad,” I said. “No problem.”
Dr. Fuzzwonker pulled a notepad and a pencil out of his white mad-scientist lab coat and made a check mark.
“Moving on, then,” he said as he walked deeper into Fizzopolis and stood in front of a giant yellow clump of fur. “This is George.”
I put my hand out and petted George. He wobbled sideways and made a sound like the fizz after a soda pop is poured over ice. It was tingly on my hand.
“He likes you,” my dad said.
“Ya think?”
“Oh yes. When Fizzies don’t like someone, they zap.”
“You mean like static electricity?”
“I mean like an electric fence.”
“Double whoa!” I said. I started to realize that Fizzopolis was more dangerous than I thought. And more awesome.
“Playtime is over, George. Time to go back to your cave.”
The yellow clump of fur, about the size of a car, started rolling away. It flopped and wobbled as it went.
“George doesn’t talk much, but he’s friendly. You’ll like him.”
I looked down at the green grassy spot where George had been playing.
“Hey, George!” I yelled. I leaned over and picked up a yellow rubber ducky. “You forgot your toy!”
George stopped flopping and rolling. He appeared to be waiting.
“You can throw it,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said.
I reeled back and threw the rubber ducky as hard as I could. It was a high, wild throw that sailed ten feet over George.
But George stretched his yellow furry blobby body up into the air and caught the ducky. Then he rolled away.
Dr. Fuzzwonker made another check on his list.
“He forgets his toy about three times a week.”
“Got it!” I said.
We wandered past a Ping-Pong table, where a lanky Fizzy with four long arms played both sides of the table.
“Leroy doesn’t like to share the Ping-Pong table,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “He needs a strict four-hour limit per day.”
“Work on sharing, no problemo,” I said.
On and on we went, through all the different parts of Fizzopolis, discovering the many things that needed doing. There were Fizzies everywhere, and peculiar habitats made of sagging, twisting tree limbs. There were giant loopy-limbed trees and caves and vines. Conveyer belts ran all over the place, high up into the ceiling of Fizzopolis, where they eventually disappeared on their way to the surface.
“The conveyer belts move Fuzzwonker Fizz from the Fizzomatic machine out into trucks pulling up behind the house,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said.
Dr. Fuzzwonker told me all the Fizzies loved working in the factory. They lived for it!
He guided me deeper into the world of Fizzopolis.
“How do you feel about babysitting?” Dr. Fuzzwonker asked, pushing open a door and looking inside.
I stepped into the room and saw the nursery. The room had rocks, strange little trees, and a kiddie pool. And there were three tiny Fizzies, wrestling around on the floor like kittens. One was pink, one was purple, and one was orange.
They all looked up at me, wide-eyed and nervous.
“Don’t make any sudden movements,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “They’ll go bonkers on you.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Dr. Fuzzwonker glanced around the room nervously. “There’s one in particular that can be . . . unpredictable. The green one.”
All three kiddie Fizzies stared at me with big round eyes. They were cute little creatures, and I bent down for a closer look.
“That’s Bob, Ethel, and Ruth,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said, pointing to the orange one, the purple one, and the pink one.
“I don’t see a green one,” I said.
Something darted from one side of the room to the other, but it was so fast all I saw was a flash. Whatever it was, it hid behind a boulder sitting in the corner of the room. Its head peeked out, and I saw a small horn and huge oval eyes.
It was green.
“There he is!” I shouted as I jumped up and down. It was a sudden movement if ever there was one, and all three of the Fizzies leaped into the air and began bouncing off the walls. Dr. Fuzzwonker didn’t move; he let them bounce off his head, his elbows, and his knees. He’d seen this before. But I felt like I was in the all-time best dodgeball game. I dodged and ducked and flipped and twisted.
“That all you got!” I laughed, narrowly avoiding them until all three baby Fizzies tired out and sat down. They cheered and hollered at me from the side.
“This babysitting gig is fun!” I said, turning to my dad just as the small green creature moved with lightning speed. He was way faster than the other three, and before I knew what had happened, the little guy had landed on the side of my head like a glob of peanut butter.
GLORP!
“That would be Floyd,” Dr. Fuzzwonker said. “He’s the unpredictable one.”
“So I see,” I said. Floyd was digging his three-fingered hand into my ear.
“There’s nothing in there worth finding,” I said. “At least I don’t think there is.”
Floyd slid under my hat and milled around in my hair, then came out the other side and sat on my shoulder.
He wasn’t much bigger than a hamster.
“Does it talk?” I asked.
Floyd grabbed my ear and looked inside, poking his eyeball about halfway inside my head.
And then Floyd spoke, very quietly, so that only I could hear him.
I looked at my dad.
“He says he needs to use the bathroom. And he’s thirsty. Also bored.”
Dr. Fuzzwonker headed for the door. “That sounds like a list of babysitting tasks to me. Have a good time! And try not to break anything.”
The-intergalactic-book-of-world-records-across-all-space-and-time lists my first day in Fizzopolis as the BEST DAY AT WORK EVER IN THE HISTORY OF JOBS. We started at the Ping-Pong table, where Floyd and I refereed a Fizzy tournament between four competitive Fizzies: Martha, Leroy, Patrick, and Yam. When all the Ping-Pong balls ended up in the lagoon, we used Floyd as the ball and that added a new dimension to the game. The Fizzies loved it.
“Look how high he goes!” Martha yelled. She had a long neck that expanded and contracted like an accordion, so her head could follow Floyd all the way up into the rafters. Apparently, they had long conversations up there about baseball cards and cotton candy.
“Pancake!” Patrick yelled. He loved it when he slammed his paddle down on Floyd and smashed him on the table. Like a pancake.
“Maybe we shouldn’t smoosh the ball like that,” I advised Patrick. “It probably doesn’t feel very good.”
But then Floyd would pop right back up and grin from ear to ear.
Leroy had the advantage of having four arms. They were each about twelve feet long, and he dragged them around like fire hoses when he walked.
“The championship round will be Leroy against . . . Leroy!” I announced when we came to the end. Martha, Patrick, and Yam were all happy to cheer, and then a whole bunch more Fizzies took a break from work to watch. There was a lot of clapping, stomping, and cheering.
It was extremely close, but in the end, Leroy won.
“Come on, Floyd,” I said when the tournament ended. “We need to retrieve all the Ping-Pong balls from the lagoon.”
We both put on swamp-scuba gear and snorkeled into the water. Franny sucked up a huge glob of air and blew a monster wave, and I rode it like a pro surfer on Zuma Beach. Floyd grabbed a hold of my face and wouldn’t let go.
After we found the Ping-Pong balls, Yam took us for a tour around the rest of Fizzopolis. Yam didn’t talk. She made squishy Yam sounds and did a lot of pointing, but Floyd sat on my shoulder and translated into my ear. Bright orange fizz popped in the air around Yam as she showed us around.
“That’s Dr. Fuzzwonker’s laboratory,” Floyd said in his squeaky voice. He sounded like a mouse who was also a monkey. I looked up and saw the most outrageous tree house I’d ever seen. It was up in a tall tree that had long green limbs. The laboratory looked like it had been cobbled together, getting bigger and bigger, and each new section was a different color. It also looked like it might fall out of the tree at any time.
Yam took us past caves where the Fizzies lived and waterfalls and groves of little trees with tiny lemons, oranges, and apples.
“She wants you to try one,” Floyd said. Yam was staring at one of the small apple trees. It stood only about two feet tall, and the apples were the size of marbles. I took one off the tree and used one tooth to gnaw around the outside.
“Yowza!” I yelled. My lips puckered and I felt like I’d just eaten three cans of frozen apple juice concentrate in a single bite.
“You should try the lemons,” Floyd said. “They’ll turn your lips inside out.”
“Sour?”
Yam nodded and Floyd explained. “This is one of the secrets of Fuzzwonker Fizz. Big flavors in small packages.”
“Cool,” I said.
Floyd jumped down and took a lemon the size of a jelly bean in his paw. Yam shook her head like it was a bad idea to eat one, but I already knew Floyd well enough to know this would only make him want to eat it more. He tossed it in the air and I reached out to grab it before it could fall into his open mouth, which had grown to the size of a basketball hoop.
Floyd was like that—he could stretch and shrink like you wouldn’t believe. I put the jelly bean–size lemon in my pocket, but when I looked back at Floyd, he had taken ten more and t
ossed those into the air.
“Nice try, little dude!” I said. I captured nine of them out of the air before they could rain down into Floyd’s mouth, but I missed the last one. When he ate it, his eyes bulged to about twelve times their normal size, his cheeks punched out like a blowfish, and he made a strange noise like a car rolling down a gravel road. Then he started shaking.
“Hey, little buddy,” I said, leaning down real close. “Are you okay?”
Floyd’s mouth opened up, and I am not kidding when I say this: He breathed yellow fire. The yellow fire was rocket fuel, and he went flying through the air like a balloon that had been blown up really big and then let go before it was tied.
“What should we do?” I asked Yam. Yam shrugged like she had no idea.
“Incoming!” I shouted, pushing Yam onto the ground as Floyd came in like a bowling ball covered in fire. He barely missed us, then bounced like a Super Ball and pinged off the ceiling. Eventually, the lemon wore off and he rolled in our direction. Smoke poured from his ears.
“Wow, Floyd. Are you okay?” I asked. I thought for sure my buddy would need an emergency room visit. But he smiled and looked longingly at the short lemon trees.
“Oh no you don’t,” I warned him. “No more goofing off. We’ve got work to do. This is my job, after all.”
Floyd acted all bent out of shape, and he jumped back onto my shoulder. He called me a party pooper, but then he hugged me right around the side of my head.
“You’re my best good buddy,” I said.
“You’re mine, too,” Floyd agreed.
We babysat little Fizzies, swept the conveyor belts, organized a Fuzzwonker Fizz bottle cleaning party, and a thousand other things. And all the while Floyd and I were inseparable!
Floyd became extremely upset when I went back upstairs that night. He ate all the Ping-Pong balls, hid George’s rubber ducky, and threw dirt clods into the lagoon. Plus a lot of other naughty things a Fizzy shouldn’t do.