The Creature in Room #YTH-125

by Mark Young

  Then… Whomp! Newton’s feet landed on solid ground.

  As he gained his bearings, he heard the chattering of excited voices.

  Then Higgy’s human face popped up in front of him.

  “You made it!” Higgy cried.

  “I… I guess I did,” Newton said, looking around. They were in an enormous rectangle-shaped empty building with high ceilings. This must be what a warehouse is, he guessed.

  Then Higgy pulled Newton aside as Saffy Zastruga popped out of the portal.

  “Gotta keep moving once you get here,” Higgy said. “You don’t want to get knocked over.”

  Professor Juvinall jumped out of the portal next, knocking over Saffy. Then the professor turned and yelled at the portal.

  “Portal, close!”

  The black hole immediately shrank and transformed back into a school brochure, which dropped to the ground. Professor Juvinall picked it up and put it in her pocket for the trip home.

  Ms. Mumtaz clapped her hands. “Well done, freshmen!” she congratulated them, and her voice echoed around the empty building. “Phase one of our trip is complete. The Museum of the Future is five blocks away from here, and we’re going to walk there in an orderly manner.”

  “Don’t forget the ice cream!” Mimi called out.

  “Thank you, Mimi,” Ms. Mumtaz said. “The Crowninshield family has arranged for all of us to have ice cream at a shop on the way to the museum. Isn’t that so generous of them?”

  “Wow, your family is so awesome, Mimi,” Tabitha Talos said, and Mimi smiled.

  “I know,” Mimi said.

  “What’s everybody standing around for? Get moving!” Professor Juvinall yelled.

  The students began to shuffle through the open warehouse door into the late-morning sunlight. Ms. Mumtaz approached Newton and his friends, who were all standing together.

  “Higgy, Odifin, how are your holograms working?” she asked.

  “Great!” they responded, showing off with a high five.

  “Excellent,” Ms. Mumtaz said. “If you have any problems with the technology at the museum, report to me immediately.”

  She turned to Theremin. “And you, Theremin, are you sure you can convince people you’re in costume, instead of being a real robot?”

  “I’m a natural actor,” Theremin responded. “Didn’t you see my performance in Frankenstein: The Musical?”

  “Brief, but memorable,” Mumtaz said with a nod. “Please take caution, Theremin. It’s very important that we keep our school a secret.”

  “You can count on me!” Theremin said, and Mumtaz walked away.

  “This is going to be great!” Theremin said. “Out in the world, for the first time!”

  Newton started to feel excited. Like Theremin, he’d never been anywhere except the school and the island. Now he was in New York City, and he could barely contain his excitement.

  “Theremin, what if this is where I’m from?” he asked in a low voice. “What if this sparks a memory?”

  “This is just one city in a big world, Newton,” Theremin said, and then he saw his friend’s face fall. “But you never know!”

  They stepped outside and walked along the sidewalk. Across from the warehouse was another warehouse, but when they turned the corner, the street was lined with shops, restaurants, a bus stop, and apartment buildings.

  Newton gazed around in amazement. Everything was new to him. The mom pushing a baby stroller, the cars whizzing by, the delivery woman on her bicycle. Nothing sparked a memory, but he was so excited that he didn’t care.

  Mimi, on the other hand, was not as impressed.

  “Where are the skyscrapers? Where are the bright lights? Where are the Broadway theaters?” she complained loudly.

  “Mimi, those are in Manhattan. This is Queens,” Ms. Mumtaz explained. “The two boroughs are very different.”

  Mimi frowned. “I should never have asked Daddy to sponsor this trip.”

  “It’s going to be fun, Mimi, really. You’ll see,” Tabitha told her. “Besides, we haven’t even gotten to the museum yet.”

  Professor Juvinall blew the gym whistle that hung around her neck. “Ice cream place, fifteen meters on the right! Everybody file in!”

  The ice cream place was a large room with big windows at the front and lots of metal chairs and tables. In the back was a counter and a freezer with all the ice cream flavors.

  “Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry,” Shelly read from the flavors on the sign board, and she gave a happy sigh. “I haven’t had just normal ice cream in a while. Everything at the school is scientifically enhanced somehow. Sometimes it’s nice to just eat plain old food and simple, regular flavors.”

  “Line up!” Professor Juvinall barked, and she and Ms. Mumtaz led the line to the counter.

  “We’re here from Franken-Sci High,” Ms. Mumtaz told the young, ponytailed server at the counter. His name tag read PABLO.

  Pablo nodded. “Sure, the Crowninshield party. Order whatever you want.”

  “Nothing for me, thank you,” Ms. Mumtaz said. “It’s savage to eat ice cream in the morning.”

  “Suit yourself,” the server said. Then he leaned down toward Professor Juvinall and began to talk in a sickly sweet voice. “And what would you like to order, little girl?”

  “I’d like you to stop patronizing me and make me a unicorn sundae with extra rainbow sprinkles,” Juvinall told him. “Got it?”

  Pablo blinked. “Yeah, sure.”

  More servers came to assist them, and the line started to move quickly. Odifin and Rotwang ordered vanilla cones dipped in a hard blue candy shell. When a server with orange braids tried to hand Odifin his cone, he backed away.

  “My assistant will take that, please,” he said, nodding to Rotwang.

  Rotwang nudged him and whispered, “You’ve got hands now, remember?”

  “Oh yes, that’s right,” Odifin said, and he took the ice cream cone from the startled young woman. “Thank you!”

  Higgy ordered a bucket of pistachio ice cream, and the woman server raised both eyebrows. Higgy nodded to Pablo. “That guy said we could order whatever we wanted,” he told her. She shrugged, reached into the freezer, and pulled out the whole bucket for him.

  “I’ll have the vegan coconut milkshake,” Shelly requested when it was her turn. Then Pablo nodded to Theremin. “What’ll you have?”

  “Nothing. As you can see, I’m a robot, and robots don’t eat,” Theremin shot back, his eyes flashing red.

  Oh no! Newton thought. Theremin forgot to pretend to be in costume.

  But Pablo just smiled. “You must be headed to the Museum of the Future. That’s a great robot costume, dude. Seriously, though, what kind of ice cream do you want?”

  Theremin laughed nervously. “Ah, nothing, actually. I had a big breakfast.”

  Newton breathed a sigh of relief.

  “What about you?” Pablo asked.

  Newton had been so distracted by his surroundings—and Theremin—that he’d forgotten to study the board. So he ordered the first thing on the list.

  “Vanilla,” he said.

  “Cone or cup?” Pablo asked.

  “Cone, please,” Newton said.

  A minute later, cone in hand, he and Theremin sat at a table with Shelly, Higgy, Odifin, and Rotwang. Rotwang had an ice cream cone in each hand and was licking both of them.

  Newton laughed. “What’s going on?”

  “It seems that I got too excited about my ability to hold things when I ordered that ice cream,” Odifin said. “I still can’t eat or taste things, which is disappointing. But Rotwang is being very helpful.”

  “Well, for a second I forgot I was supposed to be wearing a robot costume,” Theremin confided. “Luckily, the ice cream guy didn’t get suspicious.”

  “You know what, guys? I think you’re all doing a great job of blending in here,” Shelly said. “This is going to be an awesome trip! Even if it was all Mimi’s idea.”

  Newton lic
ked his ice cream cone. It was delicious! He looked around at his friends laughing, and made a promise to himself.

  Today I’m not going to even think about where I come from. I’m just going to have fun!

  Professor Juvinall’s whistle pierced the air.

  “Hurry up and finish that ice cream!” she yelled. “The Museum of the Future awaits!”

  CHAPTER 6 WELCOME TO THE MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE!

  A digital sign flashed across the entrance to the museum, the same gleaming metal-and-glass structure that Mumtaz had shown them in a hologram. Dozens of visitors funneled through the entrance. Most of them were students with school groups, just like the kids of Franken-Sci High.

  “Look, Theremin, there are kids in actual robot costumes,” Shelly said, pointing to three students. They’d fashioned their costumes using cardboard boxes painted silver, aluminum foil, coat hangers, and metal pots and pans.

  “Crude, but nice,” Theremin remarked.

  Higgy started taking photos with his camera. A woman in a security guard uniform quickly walked over and approached him.

  “Excuse me, young man, but you’re not allowed to take photos in the museum,” she said. She pointed to a sign on the wall.

  “Well, that’s not fair, now, is it, Justine?” he asked, reading her name tag. “How am I supposed to remember this trip without photos?”

  “There’s a souvenir booklet available at the gift shop, or an exhibit catalog you can buy,” Justine replied, and then she walked away.

  Higgy sighed and slipped his phone into his pocket. “Too many rules in this place,” he muttered. “I really dislike rules. Rules are the enemies of fun.”

  “All right, students, we’ve got some rules to go over before we start exploring!” Professor Juvinall announced loudly. “One: stick together. We’re touring this museum as a group. Two: don’t touch anything. Three: don’t take pictures of anything. Four: behave yourself, or you’ll be transp—” She looked around at the regular humans in the lobby and stopped herself from saying “transported.”

  “I mean, sent back to the school,” she finished. “Got it?”

  The students nodded silently.

  “We’d better be careful,” Shelly whispered to Newton. “Juvinall can be really mean if she doesn’t have her afternoon nap!”

  “Time to move!” Juvinall shouted, and they followed her through the lobby into the first room in the museum.

  The circular space was dark, with glittering lights that twinkled like stars above. Hanging from the ceiling was a large globe-shaped moon with a face—and a rocket ship stuck in one eye.

  Suddenly a glass case illuminated to the left of them. Inside, a hologram of a man in an old-timey suit and bow tie appeared. He had white hair and a white beard and mustache.

  “Greetings, visitors,” the hologram man said with a French accent. “I am author Jules Verne. I was born in Nantes, France, in 1828. I became known as the father of science fiction after writing several adventure novels. Some people say that my books forecasted the future of science, but that is only partly true. I performed a great deal of scientific research before writing each of my books, and coupled that with my imagination. If my creations inspired innovations in the future, I must humbly state that I am proud to have played a role.”

  Ms. Mumtaz nodded as he spoke. “Jules Verne’s novels are very inspiring to all future ma—scientists,” she said. “This is a very fitting place to start the exhibit.”

  The students followed her around the circular room. The next case held a cutaway replica of a metal ship that reminded Newton of a fish, with a window where an eye would be and a fantail at the other end.

  Another hologram appeared, this time of a man wearing a suit similar to the one Jules Verne had worn. His hair, mustache, and beard were brown.

  “I am Pierre Aronnax, the protagonist of Jules Verne’s novel Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea,” he said. “In the novel, my servant and I are searching for a sea monster when we discover the Nautilus, an underwater ship piloted by Captain Nemo. This is the first appearance in fiction of a submarine vehicle powered by electricity.”

  “Submarine,” Newton repeated. It was the first time he had heard the word. “That’s cool. Imagine all the things you could see underwater!”

  Another display was all about the novel From the Earth to the Moon, in which Verne had written about space suits and lunar modules before they were invented, and a rocket landing on the moon a hundred years before it happened.

  Other displays credited Verne with writing about video conferencing, holograms, and solar-powered sails used by spacecraft.

  “As a young child I found the works of Jules Verne to be very inspiring,” Ms. Mumtaz told the students. “Such a brilliant creative mind!”

  “That was really awesome,” Newton remarked as they left the Verne exhibit.

  “I guess,” Theremin said. “Compared to stuff that we see every day at school, it’s pretty tame.”

  They all followed Mumtaz into another room. A sign over a metal archway read: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF ROBOTS.

  Theremin’s eyes widened with excitement. “Now we’re talking!” he said.

  They stepped through the archway into a long, narrow corridor. As they walked, the voice of a narrator explained what they were seeing.

  “Two thousand years ago ancient Greeks told stories of their god Hephaestus, who created mechanical assistants out of gold. In these early myths the concept of the robot was born.”

  Newton stared in awe at the sight of the golden robot in the display, and his mouth dropped open. “Wow!” he said.

  “Sure, he’s shiny, but I bet he can’t do quadratic equations,” Theremin said.

  As they walked along, they saw more robots. Robots from cheesy science fiction movies. The first robots made in labs, which looked like boxes on wheels. The first widely used household robots—wheeled, disk-shaped machines that vacuumed or served snacks to your guests.

  Then the robots started to look more like Theremin again, humanoid machines with arms and legs.

  Finally, the last robot in the display looked like a typical human—with humanlike skin stretched over a metal frame, eyes that blinked, and a chest that moved up and down like it was breathing.

  “As robotic technology progressed, the imaginations of writers and filmmakers kept pace,” the narrator continued. “They dreamed up androids, robots who looked and acted like humans so convincingly that it was impossible to tell them apart from humans. These androids had one thing that early mechanical robots did not—advanced artificial intelligence.”

  The corridor opened up into a large, dark room. Lights flashed erratically. Lit-up words scrolled across a big screen in the room’s center.

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: THE FUTURE OF ROBOTICS… AND OF EARTH?

  “The future of Earth,” Theremin said.

  “Within the last one hundred years, science fiction authors have imagined humanoid robots with the ability to think, reason, and feel like humans,” the narrator began.

  “Just like you, Theremin,” Newton whispered.

  “Scientists are using artificial intelligence to accomplish much more than was ever imagined before,” the narrator went on. “AI technology powers the world’s first self-driving cars. In the future, AI might create vaccines, solve the climate crisis, and come up with new methods for clean energy. With AI the future is bright!”

  “That’s right!” Theremin cheered.

  The lights in the exhibit room flashed on. Then a sound like thunder rumbled in the room, and the lights went dark again.

  “AI may save humanity, but will AI also destroy humanity?” the narrator went on. “That is what some writers imagine, and what many humans fear. For when machines can think and reason and feel like humans can, they may join together and attempt to take over…”

  Images of robots attacking humans filled the screen. The thunder rumbled again. Then the sound stopped and the lights came back on.

&
nbsp; “Please enjoy the rest of the AI exhibit,” the narrator said calmly.”

  Most of the students from Franken-Sci High remained staring at the screen, frozen in fear. Then they all slowly turned and looked at Theremin.

  Mimi spoke up first. “Wow, Theremin. Are you part of the robots’ plan to take over the world? I didn’t think you had it in you…”

  “You know there’s no plan like that,” Theremin shot back. “But just in case, maybe you should try being extra nice to me.”

  Mimi rolled her eyes and walked away.

  “That was certainly intense,” Higgy remarked.

  “Yeah, it was great!” Theremin said. “You know, when Professor Flubitus came back from the future, he said that Newton and Shelly played an important role in the school. But he didn’t say anything about me. So I got kind of worried, you know, that maybe robots weren’t going to be important in the future. This exhibit makes me feel a lot better.”

  “I think it’s silly to be afraid of AI,” Shelly remarked. “Humans are only afraid because they know that humans are the scariest things on the planet, and they think robots will be just the same. But robots might be a lot better.”

  Newton’s head was starting to fill up, with so much new information to take in. He thought about asking one of his friends to say the words “noodle noggin,” which somehow allowed him to be really smart for a short period of time. But when that happened, he sort of got lost in his head and lost focus on everything else. And Newton didn’t want to miss anything in this amazing museum.

  They toured the AI exhibits, and then moved on to the next room.

  “Blimey!” Higgy exclaimed.

  In the center of the space was a large statue of a being made of green protoplasm. It looked a lot like Higgy did in his original form.

  “What is this?” Newton wondered out loud.

  In this exhibit, comic-book-style lettering on the walls told the story of the green guy. A comic book artist named Bettina Ramirez had created the superhero, Goo Guy, who was made of super-advanced protoplasm and could change his form, squeeze into small places, and do other cool stuff.