POP! The cork flew out of the bottle of fizzy apple juice.
I poured the bubbly into two plastic champagne glasses and put the bottle down on my brand-new picnic blanket.
It was a beautiful day at the Lake Vortville beach, and, looking out at the huge expanse of pink velvet, I raised my glass for a toast. "To really big art."
"Who's Art?" asked Chip.
Yes, I was picnicking with Chip, not Carla. I already had all the food, so I figured, why waste it? Of course, I knew Chip would probably eat everything all by himself, but I wasn't that hungry. Nearly blinding the girl you love tends to put a damper on your appetite.
The school nurse had said Carla would be fine after resting her eyes for a few days, but I decided it was probably smart not to try to ask her out again anytime soon. Maybe I'd wait long enough for her to forget the whole incident.
Like a year.
"Let's go swimming!" Chip cheered. I looked up and saw that he was now wearing a swimsuit and had an inflatable horsey pool toy around his waist.
"We can't," I said. "The whole lake is covered with pink velvet."
Chip was confused. "What's the point of going to the beach if you can't go swimming?"
"Well," I pondered, "we could build a sandcastle."
"Great idea!" Chip grabbed a plastic spoon and started digging fast. I just watched him and drowned my sorrows in fizzy apple juice.
But then, something weird happened. As Chip was building the sandcastle, the pink velvet suddenly seemed closer than before. It was like the tide coming in . . . but there was no visible water here.
"Oh no! I'd better build a moat!" Chip said as he noticed the velvet coming so close.
But as Chip kept digging away, I gave the pink velvet a second look. Did it just wash ashore a bit? Did the wind blow it out of place?
Or was it . . . growing?
I peered closely at the edge of the velvet. Rubbing it between my fingers, it seemed kind of strange, kind of slimy. So I whipped out my Fold-a-Scope, a foldable microscope I invented that I keep in my back pocket. (You never know when you might need to look at something really small.) And what I saw through the Fold-a-Scope blew my mind.
The pink velvet wasn't made of fabric . . . it was made of BILLIONS OF NANOBOTS!
And they were multiplying!