What's the Matter with Newton?

by Mark Young

  Seeing you at your typewriter inspired me to become a writer.

  This is for you, Dad.

  —M. Y.

  CHAPTER 1

  SPLAT

  The boy slowly opened his eyes and sat up. He blinked under the glare of the fluorescent lights above. As his eyes focused, he could see that he was in a room filled with rows of shelves holding glass jars. Inside each jar was a mass of gelatinous gunk.

  Brains.

  He had no idea who he was, or where he was. He looked down at himself.

  He was sort of tall—teenage-size, he guessed. He was wearing jeans that looked new. Gray sneakers. Light-blue shirt with a collar. Tagged to the shirt was a student ID: NEWTON WARP, FRESHMAN, FRANKEN-SCI HIGH.

  Newton Warp. That was his name, he suddenly realized. At least he knew that. The other stuff, he wasn’t so sure of. Have I ever heard of Franken-Sci High before? he wondered. Nope, don’t think so!

  Then he felt a prickling sensation on his neck and turned to see that one of the brains with eyeballs attached to it was staring at him.

  “What are you looking at?” Newton whispered to the brain. Then a loud voice made him jump.

  “Theremin, you can’t do that! That’s cheating!”

  Newton peeked through the shelf of brains behind him and saw two people in the next aisle. One of them was a girl. Good, I know what a girl is! he thought.

  This girl had brown hair and big glasses. She was wearing leggings with polka dots, a fake-fur poncho, and a long scarf around her neck—or was it a snake?

  And that other person is a robot, Newton thought. The robot was shorter than the girl, with a metal body, and round, blue lights where a human’s eyes would go. Instead of walking, he hovered a few inches above the floor.

  Newton saw that the robot was connected to one of the brain jars by a cord. One end of the cord was attached to a port on the jar, and the other was plugged into the robot’s head.

  “It is not cheating, Shelly!” the robot replied. “You would do it too if you had a plug in your head!”

  “I absolutely would not, Theremin, and you know it,” Shelly replied.

  The robot’s eyes flashed red. “Fine!” he yelled. Then he angrily pulled out the plug, disconnecting himself.

  In a flash, the jar tipped over, the lid popped off, and the brain flew out and hit the window behind them. Splat! Newton watched, fascinated, as the brain slowly slid down the glass, leaving a trail of slime and making a loud squeaking sound before finally hitting the floor.

  The robot stared at it for a moment.

  The girl laughed. “It’s not going to bite. Come on, let’s pick it up,” she said.

  The robot gingerly held out the jar as the girl picked up the slimy brain, plopped it back in, and wiped her hands on her poncho as if she did this all the time.

  “Whose was it?” she asked as Theremin put the jar back on the shelf.

  “Sir Isaac Newton,” the robot replied.

  Newton? That’s my name! Newton thought as he quietly watched from behind the shelves.

  Then Shelly started to laugh.

  “What’s so funny, Shelly?” Theremin asked.

  Yes, what’s so funny? Newton wondered.

  “Don’t you get it?” she asked.

  Theremin shook his head. “Get what?”

  “What goes up, must come down . . . ,” Shelly hinted.

  Theremin shrugged.

  Shelly sighed. “It’s fitting because the brain slid down the window, observing the laws of gravity discovered by its former owner, Sir Isaac Newton!”

  After hearing his name again, Newton felt like he had to say something.

  “Newton! That’s my name too!” he blurted out.

  Shelly and Theremin rushed over to Newton.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” Theremin blurted out aggressively.

  Shelly quickly stepped between him and Newton. “Sorry about that. My friend is not great with strangers,” she apologized. “So let’s try that again. Hi, Newton! Are you new here?”

  “Actually, I’m not sure where ‘here’ is,” Newton replied. “Or why I’m here, or where I came from.”

  “No idea at all?” Shelly asked.

  “Nope.”

  Shelly and Theremin exchanged glances.

  “Have you ever seen him on campus before?” Shelly asked Theremin.

  Theremin’s eyes flashed as he checked his memory banks. “Never.”

  “So he’s new, but he doesn’t know where he is, or where he came from . . .” Shelly’s voice trailed off as she pondered this. “Wasn’t Odifin working on an amnesia formula? Maybe Newton’s a new student, and Odifin decided to test out the formula on him?”

  “What’s an Odifin?” Newton asked.

  “Odifin Pinkwad is one of the students here at the school,” Shelly replied. “But not one of the nicest.”

  “That’s for sure,” Theremin agreed.

  Shelly held out her hand. “We’ll help you, Newton. I’m Shelly Ravenholt, and this is Theremin Rozika.”

  Theremin slapped her hand away. “Wait, Shelly! We don’t know where he’s been.”

  As Theremin floated up to Newton, a flashlight popped out of a compartment on his head, and he shone it in Newton’s eyes.

  “Hey, what are you—” Newton started to protest, but the robot interrupted him.

  “This won’t take long,” Theremin said. “We have to examine you to make sure you’re not dangerous.”

  “I don’t feel dangerous,” Newton said.

  “Arms up and shoes off, please,” Theremin said.

  Shelly tried to explain. “Don’t mind Theremin. He’s just being cautious. Last month Tabitha Talos made a mecho-humanoid android of herself to take tests for her. But the android wasn’t properly wired and it melted.”

  Newton’s eyes got wide, and Shelly shrugged. “Stuff like that happens all the time here.”

  “And ‘here’ is . . . ?” Newton asked.

  “Right,” Shelly said. “Sorry. You’re in Franken-Sci High. It’s a school for kids who want to be scientists. Most of us are the children of scientists, but not all of us.”

  “Mad scientists,” Theremin grumbled. He got to work even though Newton had only taken off one shoe.

  “What’s a mad scientist?” Newton asked.

  “It depends on your point of view,” Shelly replied. “The world might see some of our parents and ancestors as mad scientists, but that’s just because they were not afraid to take risks! To explore areas of science that others might find frightening or unconventional. To imagine that anything—”

  “Aha!” Theremin cried. He pointed to the bottom of Newton’s foot. “A bar code.”

  Newton and Shelly looked. Theremin was right. The black lines of a bar code glistened on the bottom of Newton’s foot.

  “Now, that’s interesting,” Shelly remarked, adjusting her glasses to see better.

  Theremin’s eyes flashed, turning to red lasers as he scanned the bar code.

  “Nothing,” he muttered. Then he scanned it again.

  “So, if many of you are the kids of scientists, does that mean I am too?” Newton asked.

  “You could be,” Shelly replied. “Are you sure you don’t remember?”

  Newton shook his head. “I’m not even sure if I have a family.”

  “Oh, how awful!” Shelly said sympathetically. “Listen, I’m thinking that Odifin must have used an amnesia formula on you. He might have thought it would be funny to prank the new kid.”

  “That sounds like the most logical explanation,” Theremin agreed, and then he tried reading the bar code again. “Still nothing.”

  “Theremin and I can take yo
u to the school’s headmistress,” Shelly continued. “She’ll make Odifin give you the antidote. She’ll know who your family is too.”

  The bar code . . . amnesia formula . . . mad scientists . . . Newton’s head was spinning. How do I know this girl and this robot are telling me the truth? he wondered. For some reason, he felt he could trust Shelly. Besides, he had no choice. He had no one else to trust right now.

  “I’d love to go see her,” Newton replied. “Except . . .” He looked over at Theremin.

  Theremin was still holding on to Newton’s foot. His eyes kept flashing . . . and flashing . . . and flashing. . . .

  “Uh-oh!” Shelly said. “Theremin, are you glitching?”

  Theremin whacked the side of his metal head with his hand. “I’m fine,” he insisted. “It’s probably just a loose wire.” He whacked his head again, and his red eyes flashed . . . and flashed. His head bopped up and down.

  “It doesn’t make sense!” Theremin cried, filled with frustration. “It’s a simple bar code. Why can’t I scan it?”

  “Let me help,” Shelly said, and she pressed a reset button on the back of his head.

  Theremin’s eyes stopping flashing. His head stopped bopping.

  “Better?” Shelly asked.

  “I think I need to get my eyes checked,” Theremin responded. “My bar code scanner must not be working.”

  “First we have to help Newton,” Shelly said.

  “You can bring him to Mumtaz,” Theremin snapped. “I need to see Nurse Bunsen.”

  “All right. I’ll check in with you later, okay?” Shelly said, but Theremin floated away without another word.

  Newton put his shoe back on. “So, this brain room is part of the school?” he asked.

  “It’s part of the library, actually,” Shelly explained as they walked. “Many of the world’s greatest scientists donated their brains to the school. We can connect with them to research a project, or to study for a test.”

  “So why did you say that Theremin was cheating?” Newton asked.

  She showed him a rectangular device. “Everyone has a tablet—it’s like a small computer. You’ll probably remember that when you get your memory back. You can plug it into a port on the jar of the brain you want to get information from. The brain gives out electrical impulses that communicate with the tablet.”

  Newton nodded like he understood, although he really didn’t.

  “Theremin has a tablet too,” Shelly continued, “but he was plugging the brain directly into his own hard drive. That’s against the rules.”

  “I hope Isaac Newton’s brain is all right,” he added.

  “Me too,” Shelly said.

  As they made their way to the headmistress’s office, Newton was silent. Students walked by, talking and laughing, and Newton looked at every face, hoping to find a familiar one. But he didn’t recognize a soul.

  CHAPTER 2

  What’s Your Major Malfunction?

  Theremin floated through the halls of Franken-Sci High toward the Student Clinic. He was nervous. He’d never had to visit Nurse Bunsen before, but he had seen other freshmen students come back from the clinic looking pale and unsteady. When he’d asked them what had happened, they would usually mumble something about “unusual methods,” but they couldn’t complain too much because they’d been cured.

  Not being able to perform a simple bar code scan had shaken up Theremin. That had never happened before.

  It is Father’s fault, Theremin mused. He gave me human emotions and thoughts but only “adequate” intelligence.

  Theremin knew that his father’s greatest fear was that Theremin would be even smarter than he was. So Dr. Rozika had worked a flaw into Theremin’s programming. If Theremin began to do really well at one thing, he’d immediately lose his ability to do something else.

  But I wasn’t doing anything great before my scanner conked out, Theremin remembered. In fact, I had just messed up, sending that brain flying. . . .

  At least Shelly didn’t mind that he was a bit different. She’d always understood him. When his dad had first enrolled him in Franken-Sci High, the other robot students had been friendly toward him. But then he’d started glitching . . . and because he had human-like emotions, glitching made him feel really angry.

  One day he’d failed a simple quiz in Engineering Artificial Life Forms, and at lunch Klaatu had teased him about it.

  “How could you fail at that, dude?” his robot friend had asked. “I mean, you are an artificial life form!”

  Theremin had gotten angry and smashed everyone’s algae-infused pudding cups, and even though robots don’t need to eat for fuel, some of them had taste receptors and had gotten really bummed. Theremin wasn’t allowed to eat lunch with them anymore.

  The next day Theremin had been sulking at a table by himself when Shelly walked up.

  “Can I sit here?” she asked, with her big smile, and of course Theremin had said yes. And the two had been best friends ever since.

  And now here is this Newton guy, appearing out of nowhere, Theremin thought. Shelly had been all smiley and friendly with him, too. What did that mean?

  He stepped up to the door to the Student Clinic, and the door slid up into the ceiling. Theremin scanned the room. Inside, two kids were sitting on a bench. Across from the bench was an empty desk with a grinning skull on top, along with a plaque that read: NURSE CARLOTTA BUNSEN.

  On the wall in front of Theremin was another door decorated with instructive posters. They said things like: SAFETY GOGGLES SAVE EYES! and BE CAREFUL WORKING WITH ELECTRICITY: IT CAN BE SHOCKING!

  Theremin sat down on the bench next to a kid he knew, Gustav Goddard. Gustav turned to Theremin.

  “What are you here for?” he asked.

  “Code-scanning problem,” Theremin replied. “You?”

  Gustav wiggled his eyebrows—or rather, the part of his face where his eyebrows should have been.

  “Had a little problem in my Unconventional Chemistry class,” Gustav replied. “I sort of blew my eyebrows off.”

  “I didn’t even notice,” Theremin replied. He nodded toward the girl sitting on Gustav’s other side. Her hands were curled up into little balls and she was licking them.

  “What’s up with her?” Theremin asked.

  “Oh, that’s Tori Twitcher,” Gustav said. “She got hit by a mind-control ray by accident and now she thinks she’s a cat.”

  Tori looked at Theremin. “Meow!”

  The door with the posters on it opened, and a boy walked out. He had a patch over his right eye.

  Nurse Bunsen stepped out behind him.

  “Run along now, Leopold,” she said. “Don’t worry, it should grow back by tomorrow. Or maybe Tuesday. Wednesday, at the latest.”

  Theremin studied her. She wore a spacesuit instead of a nurse’s uniform. A clear helmet. Short hair that had little swirls in it like soft-serve ice cream.

  “You’re next, Tori,” she said.

  Tori was swatting at a fly. She didn’t look up.

  “Here, kitty kitty,” Nurse Bunsen said in a sweet voice. Tori’s head jerked up, and then on all fours she followed the nurse into the exam room.

  “I’m glad all that’s wrong with me is some missing eyebrows,” Gustav remarked.

  “Uh-huh,” Theremin said. He wasn’t really listening. He was still thinking about that new guy. Newton was definitely human, not mecho-humanoid, so they didn’t have to worry about him exploding. But there is still something weird about that guy, Theremin thought.

  He hoped that Shelly’s theory would turn out to be right: that Newton was the victim of an amnesia formula, a simple prank, and that Mumtaz would fix it. Then Newton would remember that he had other friends, and he could go hang out with them. And Shelly and Theremin could go back to being best buddies again. A terrific twosome. A dynamite duo . . .

  The door creaked open again. “Good as new, Tori,” Nurse Bunsen said as Tori exited, looking normal again. “Gustav, you’re next.�
��

  Tori looked at Theremin and Gustav. “I hate Mondays,” she said.

  Gustav went into the exam room, and Theremin’s robot brain tracked the time as he was waiting. Exactly 17.4 seconds later, Gustav came back out. Where his eyebrows should have been, two new eyebrows had been drawn on in marker. Purple marker.

  “Whaddya think?” Gustav asked, wiggling his marker eyebrows.

  Theremin thought Gustav looked ridiculous, even for a human, but he didn’t want to say that with Nurse Bunsen standing right there.

  “Um, fab,” Theremin replied, searching his memory banks for synonyms. “Cool. Brilliant.”

  “Thanks!” Gustav said brightly, and left.

  Nurse Bunsen crooked a finger at Theremin. “Come on in, Mr. Rozika.”

  Theremin cautiously followed her into the next room. His danger sensors started to jump a little. In the back of the room was a huge aquarium filled with electric eels. They sizzled in the water.

  “What seems to be the trouble, Theremin?” Nurse Bunsen asked.

  “Something’s wrong with my bar code scanner,” he replied.

  “Is that all?” Nurse Bunsen sounded disappointed. “Let’s give you a little test.”

  She pressed a button in the wall and part of the wall opened up. A metal tray slid out, stacked with a group of items in a pyramid shape.

  “When your father founded the robotics lab here, he designed this robot vision test,” she explained. “Start scanning the items on the bottom, and move to the top.”

  Theremin floated over to the items. The first item on the bottom left was a package of toilet paper. Theremin’s eyes flashed red over the bar code.

  “Eight-count of Super Soft Stuff, double-ply,” he reported, and Nurse Bunsen nodded.

  He moved to the next item—a jar full of eyeballs. Theremin scanned the bar code.

  “Twenty-four assorted replacement eyeballs,” the robot announced.

  “Keep going, Theremin,” the nurse encouraged him.

  He scanned his way up the pyramid.

  “One gravity-resistant soccer ball.”

  “One loaf of gluten-free bread.”

  “Microscope, Curie model 620.”