by Mark Young
“Okay then, shuffle along,” he said, and the door slammed shut behind them.
“That was interesting,” Newton said.
“Definitely,” Theremin said. “I did a quick scan, and his body temperature and pulse rate indicate that he was lying.”
“Typical Flubitus,” Newton said. “I guess we should hold off on the photo.”
“Sure,” Theremin said. “Hey, I’m going to go check on Shelly. She might have cooled down by now. Would you mind letting Higgy know that we won’t have a story for the issue?”
“No problem,” Newton said, and the two boys walked in different directions.
Then… ping! Newton got a message notification on his tablet. He checked it. It was from Flubitus.
Meet me in Mumtaz’s office NOW!
Newton sighed and walked to the office, where Mumtaz and Flubitus were waiting for him.
“I feel like we’ve done this already,” Newton said. “You’re going to tell me not to publish the picture, but the real reason is that it will change the future if I do, and you can’t tell me why.”
“No, Newton,” Ms. Mumtaz said. “This time it’s different. Professor Flubitus thinks it’s time for you to know the whole truth.”
“Really?” Newton asked.
“Really,” Professor Flubitus said. “Newton, there is an emergency, and I see only one solution. You must travel to the future with me!”
CHAPTER 9 The Lonely Resident of Frankenstein Castle
Newton didn’t say anything for a second. His brain was spinning.
“Wait, you want me to go to the future now?” he asked. “I thought… I thought I was supposed to wait around until the future happened and then save the school.”
“Sit down, Newton,” Ms. Mumtaz instructed. “Let’s hear what Flubitus has to say.”
Newton sat down in a chair in front of Mumtaz’s desk. She sat calmly, staring at him, while Flubitus paced the floor.
“Okay,” Newton said. “What’s going on?”
“Once again we have reached the point in the future where the school is in danger,” Flubitus began.
“How?” Newton asked. “How is it in danger?”
Flubitus looked at Mumtaz, who nodded. “It’s Shelly,” he revealed. “In the future she is about to reveal the secret of Franken-Sci High to the world. When she does that, future Mumtaz will have to evacuate the school and send the buildings into another dimension. It will be the end of Franken-Sci High as we know it.”
Newton gasped. “So Shelly is the one who destroys Franken-Sci High?” It was hard to believe—sweet, caring Shelly, a villain! “This is awful.”
Professor Flubitus nodded. “Awful indeed—”
Mumtaz interrupted. “There’s something I don’t understand, Hercule,” she said. “This has happened in the forty-one other time lines. What is different with this time line?”
“This time I have a different solution to the problem,” Flubitus explained. “I think current Newton and future Newton have a chance at stopping her—but they’ll need to work together.”
Newton held up his hands. “I don’t even understand this whole time line thing. Can you please slow down and start from the beginning?”
Mumtaz waved her hand, and a holographic computer screen appeared in front of her face. When she tapped on an icon, a holographic scene projected into in the room. She stood up.
“Come,” she said. “We’ll show you.”
She stepped into the projection, and Newton and Flubitus followed her. As soon as Newton stepped in, the holographic scene looked real all around him—like they had instantly traveled to a new place. They were in front of a tall, old stone castle with a moat around it. Dark clouds hovered above it, shooting jagged lightning spikes at the towers.
“Where are we?” Newton asked.
“This is the original Frankenstein castle,” Mumtaz replied. “Shelly lives here now.”
Newton gazed up at the creepy towers. “Shelly lives here?”
Mumtaz nodded. “She ends up here in every time line in the future, although sometimes it takes her longer to get here,” she explained.
She snapped her fingers, and the scene changed to a room inside the castle. A woman with curly hair and big glasses sat behind a desk piled with papers. A blue monster napped on top of one of the paper piles.
It’s grown-up Shelly! Newton realized. And there’s Peewee!
“In every time line, Shelly leaves the school to protest the school’s monster-making program,” Mumtaz continued. “She retreats to the castle and begins taking in monsters from all over the world who need help. She refuses to talk to anyone.”
Newton gazed at grown-up Shelly. Behind her glasses he saw two sad eyes.
“And then, when she learns that Crowninshield Industries is funding the school’s monster-making program so that they can use monster abilities for profit, she decides to shut the whole thing down and reveal the school’s secret to the world,” Mumtaz explained.
“But this time line is a bit different,” Flubitus chimed in. “In this time line Shelly decides to start the school newspaper so that she has an excuse to interview teachers and try to figure out your past, Newton.”
“That’s why she started the newspaper?” Newton asked.
Flubitus nodded. “Apparently. And that is why she was close to the main stage on Founders’ Day, and why Peewee teleported to the stage, and why her rescue program was closed,” he said. “This caused her to leave the school in freshman year. It made the Shelly in this time line sadder, and angrier. And she’s also had two more years to search for monsters in the wild.”
Newton digested all this. “I still don’t understand what you mean about time lines,” he said. “And why you needed to create me.”
Mumtaz snapped her fingers again, and the scene changed. Now they were in a circular, white room, with a huge pod in the center. Men and women in white lab coats stood on a platform that went all around the room, and Newton recognized a lot of the school’s professors: Leviathan, Phlegm, Wagg, a grown-up Juvinall, Wells, Rozika, Snollygoster, Yuptuka, and Flubitus. Future Ms. Mumtaz stood next to the pod, oddly looking much the same as the current Ms. Mumtaz standing next to Newton.
“After the school was evacuated and the buildings were sent to another dimension, all the professors went into hiding,” the headmistress explained. “Professor Flubitus spent a few years perfecting his time-travel technology. We wanted to return to a time before the adult Shelly revealed our secret, to try to reason with her—or stop her in any way we could.”
Newton got a little chill. What did “any way we could” mean?
“First we sent some of the professors back in time,” Mumtaz continued. “But no one could get close to Shelly. She’d turned the castle into a fortress, and her creatures always protected her from anyone who tried to enter.”
“But then we had an inspiration,” Flubitus chimed in. “An inspiration directly from the science fiction book written by Zoumba Summit, also known as Mobius Mumtaz. We would create a superhuman, one who could get past Shelly’s monsters and stop her.”
Newton looked at the pod. “So you created me… in that?”
“Well, our first attempt at such a creation was not as ambitious,” Mumtaz admitted. “We began with just a brain…”
Newton gasped. “Odifin!”
Mumtaz nodded and snapped her fingers, and the scene changed. Newton saw a brain in a jar that was smaller than the Odifin he knew. The jar was wrapped in a blanket on a table, with a teddy bear and other toys around it.
“We quickly realized that Odifin was more than just a brain. He was quite human,” Mumtaz told Newton.
“We sent him back in time—fourteen years before this current time—so that he could grow up in the school,” Flubitus explained. “We knew he wouldn’t be an outcast at Franken-Sci High.”
Newton nodded. Any problems Odifin had at the school were due to his sometimes prickly personality. For the most part nobody
thought it was weird that he was a brain in a jar.
“After Odifin we began creating full humans,” Mumtaz explained. “We tried forty more times, and—”
Newton interrupted her. “Wait!” he cried. “You mean there have been forty other Newtons, just like me?”
CHAPTER 10 Number Forty-Two
“Technically there have been forty-one, if you count Odifin,” Mumtaz answered calmly. “But forty humans that look like you. I think we can all agree that Odifin is completely his own person.”
“We came up with the idea of the bar codes to keep track of you Newtons,” Flubitus explained. “The last two numbers of your bar code, Newton, are forty-two.”
The scene changed again, and they were back in the white lab. A boy who looked like Newton, but a few years older, was running on a treadmill while a grown-up Professor Juvinall took notes on a clipboard.
“Newton Number Two had a few simple superhuman powers, and we trained him in a lab,” Mumtaz said. “But when we sent him back in time to stop adult Shelly in her castle, he wasn’t strong enough to stop the monsters.”
Newton watched as Newton Two was grabbed by a giant monster claw on the castle tower.
“We kept trying,” Mumtaz continued. “Newton Three, Newton Four, Newton Five…”
The holographic scenes kept changing. A Newton in the grasp of a large tentacle. A Newton being dragged into a hole in the ground. A Newton being carried away in the claws of a flying monster.
Newton cringed. “So I just kept failing?” he asked.
Flubitus nodded. “Not you, exactly, but the other Newtons—you’re all a little different, you see,” he answered. “Each time we sent a Newton back in time to stop adult Shelly, we created a new time line of events. When it came time to create Newton Forty-Two—that’s you—I came up with the idea to do things differently.”
Newton Forty-Two, Newton thought. He imagined a line of Newtons, starting with Odifin, in his head. That was a lot of Newtons!
“What’s different this time?” Newton asked.
“We sent Newton Forty-Two—I mean you—further back in time,” Flubitus explained. “Back to Franken-Sci High. None of the other Newtons even got to meet Shelly. We thought if you and Shelly could become friends in your youth, then maybe you could get into adult Shelly’s lab without having to fend off the monsters.”
Now they were in the Brain Bank, on the day when Newton first appeared at the school. Shelly was smiling at him, and Theremin was scanning the bar code on Newton’s foot.
Newton thought about this. “Okay. That part worked. Shelly and I became friends. But I haven’t even visited the future yet. How do you know I failed?”
“That’s where my time machine comes in,” Flubitus said. “That big glowing hoop that you saw. I’ve been visiting the future to see how things are going. In this time line Shelly has more monsters protecting her castle than before. Future Newton is captured and being held in a monster habitat. And Shelly is working on a way to broadcast the truth about Franken-Sci high to every brain phone in the world.”
“Brain phone?” Newton asked.
Mumtaz answered him. “Twenty-five years from now there are no cell phones. Instead everyone has a microchip implant in their brain. You have one too, but it only works in the future.”
Newton took a deep breath. “Since my future self has failed, does that mean you’re going to start another time line?”
“That is what we would normally do,” Mumtaz replied.
“But I have another idea,” Flubitus said. “First, I believe that if you and future Newton combine your powers, you can work together to get past the monsters and reach Shelly. And, more important, I believe that your friendship with Shelly is strong enough to convince her to do the right thing.”
“Do you really think so?” Newton asked.
“I think it’s worth a try,” Flubitus said. “I have to admit that the reason is somewhat personal too, Newton. This is the first time that you have been more than just a number and a fighting machine to me and the other professors. We’re fond of you, Newton. We want you to succeed, not just to save the school but so that you can live happily ever after, and we won’t need to create Number Forty-Three.”
Mumtaz spoke up. “You have to understand, Newton, that none of this has happened to me yet either,” she said. “Everything I know about the future has been shown to me by Hercule Flubitus. However, I am sure that I am as fond of you as future Mumtaz is, if not more. Now that I’ve heard Hercule’s scheme, I like it. I think you have what it takes to succeed, Newton.”
Newton mulled all this over. Flubitus thinks I can do it. Mumtaz has faith in me. And future Shelly… she looks like she needs a friend.
“I’ll do it!” Newton cried.
“Excellent!” Flubitus cheered. “Let’s go to my lab.”
Mumtaz snapped her fingers, and the holographic projection stopped. They were back in her office, although technically they hadn’t left, Newton knew. Every vision of the future they’d seen had just been a projection.
Then the headmistress leaned into Newton and hugged him. Her bony arms jabbed into his ribs, but Newton didn’t mind. He was too surprised to be getting a hug from her.
She pulled away from him. “Good luck, Newton,” she said. “I expect to see you back here safe, and with the problems of the future solved soon enough.”
“I’ll do my best,” Newton promised, and he followed Flubitus to his office.
The professor closed the door behind them. Then they entered the supply closet. The giant hoop wasn’t glowing yet.
“Time travel can leave you feeling a bit woozy,” Flubitus warned. “But it’s rather easy to do. Once the hoop is activated, you just step through.”
Newton nodded. “Got it.”
Flubitus flipped a switch on the wall, and the hoop began to hum and glow. It became brighter and brighter, and sparks began to sizzle from it.
“Ready!” Flubitus cried. “Follow me to the future!”
Flubitus stepped through the hoop and disappeared. Newton took a deep breath and followed.
And behind him watched a startled Theremin, who’d detected the gravity fluctuation again and had come to investigate.…
CHAPTER 11 Pandemonium!
Newton’s body tingled as he walked through the hoop. He could feel every hair on his head standing on end. The green light blinded him for a moment, but as soon as both feet were through the hoop, the light faded. He was in the secret supply closet room with Professor Flubitus, and the hoop was no longer buzzing.
Newton frowned. “It didn’t work?”
“On the contrary, Newton. It worked very well!” the professor exclaimed. “This is a time portal, not a time-and-space portal, so we are in the future in the very place where we began.”
“Then how will we get to Shelly’s castle?” Newton asked.
Flubitus grinned. “The same way we normally would. With a portal pass! Come, let’s go see future Mumtaz!” But then he stopped. “I just remembered, Newton. There are some people in this time line who might remember you from the past, and that could cause confusion. Until we leave the school, can you use one of your abilities to change your appearance?”
“Well, I could camouflage the whole time,” Newton suggested. “Or I can mimic someone if I can see an image of the person.”
Flubitus hurried to his bookshelf. “I have just the thing!” he said, and he pulled out an old, leather-bound book and started flipping the pages. “My old yearbook. Here I am, at age fourteen. What do you think?”
He showed Newton a photo of a teenage boy with wild hair, a very long and wide chin, and the start of a mustache. The caption underneath read, Hercule Flubitus wins this year’s Mad Science Fair with his time portal.
“You can be a young me!” Flubitus said, sounding tickled by the idea. “Just until we get our portal pass.”
“Sure,” Newton said. He stared at the photo for a moment. Then he closed his eyes and concentrate
d. When he opened them, Flubitus was staring at him in amazement.
“Quite remarkable, Newton!”
Newton looked at his reflection in the window, and saw young Flubitus staring back at him. He grinned. “Yeah, not bad.”
Suddenly he heard a bell ring inside his head, and he jumped.
“Did you hear that?” he asked. “It sounded like it was right inside my brain.”
“It was,” Flubitus replied. “Remember, it’s twenty-five years in the future. Things have changed. Now all school announcements and class bells get projected directly into your mind.”
Newton nodded. “Wow!”
“That’s not all,” Flubitus said. “You may notice other things that are quite different, but try not to react. You need to blend in until we get to the headmistress’s office.”
Newton nodded. “Got it!”
They stepped out into the hallway. It looked the same as the school Newton knew, with lime-green-and-yellow floor tiles. Students were walking through the halls to get to their next classes. To Newton, they looked a lot like the students from his time. There were robots, like Theremin. One kid was flickering in and out of dimensions, like Professor Wells always did. A girl with cat ears and a tail reminded him of his friend Tori Twitcher, who’d once thought she was a cat.
I guess some things never change, Newton thought.
Then Newton looked more closely. All the students were hovering inches above the ground!
“Hover shoes,” Flubitus explained as they walked.
Then one of the students stepped onto a circle at the end of the hallway. His body sparkled, dematerialized, and disappeared!
“Localized teleportation pad,” Flubitus told Newton. “Very handy if you’re running late for class.”
Next they passed a classroom door. A girl walked through it from the hallway into the classroom.
“Homework not complete,” an electronic voice announced. “Report immediately to detention!”