Po shrugged. “She’s not wrong.”
“There has to be a way to solve this without digging into everyone’s business,” said Harper—and then she shrieked.
Po gasped. Harper was soaking wet. A jet of water from a nearby water fountain was blasting her.
“Make it stop!” Harper yelled, lifting her hands and closing her eyes against the torrent.
“Harper, just run!” Jodi said. Ash held up a notebook, blocking the water as much as she could.
Po launched into action.
He hurried over to the water fountain. It was a fancy electronic fountain that the school’s science teacher, Doc Culpepper, had recently installed. Po knew that meant it must have an off switch.
He found a big red button and, hoping for the best, he pushed it. The stream of water tapered off immediately.
But the damage was already done. Harper stood motionless in a puddle in the middle of the hallway. Water dripped from her hair, clothes, and glasses. The poor girl looked completely stunned.
Ash pulled a tissue from her backpack. Harper took it, then paused, realizing it wouldn’t be much help.
“Harper, are you okay?” Po asked.
Harper pushed her glasses up her nose, but they slid back down again. “Please tell Ms. Minerva I may be a few minutes late,” she said. Then she waddled down the hallway, squelching all the while.
* * *
Harper was late, but Ms. Minerva had other problems to worry about. The clucking on the intercom had been joined by a variety of barnyard sounds. The class hamster’s newly automated food dispenser was launching pellets across the classroom every few seconds. And the digital whiteboard refused to display the day’s assignments. Instead, it was showing photos of Ms. Minerva’s recent vacation to Mykonos. From the looks of it, their teacher had had a wonderful time on the Greek island.
“Oh no,” Ash said at her desk. She pulled a dripping-wet sheet of paper from her notebook. “My homework got soaked.”
“You think that’s bad?” Morgan said. “My homework got eaten by the robot vacuum cleaner. It got one of my shoelaces and half my lunch before it was done. What’s going on around here?”
Harper took her seat. She’d switched into her gym clothes, which were baggy but dry. “I just saw Doc running from one disaster to the next,” she said. “I offered to help her during lunch. She seemed…a little stressed.”
Ms. Minerva was still struggling with the digital whiteboard. She sighed at the sight of herself in a sunhat. Then a hamster pellet hit her in the side of the head.
“Don’t feel too bad for Doc,” the teacher said. “I have a feeling her ‘upgrades’ are the cause of these problems. Did we really need automated water fountains? Or a miniature electronic treadmill for Baron Sweetcheeks? He was perfectly happy with his old hamster wheel.”
Po looked over at the tiny hamster on his treadmill. All four of the little guy’s paws were a blur of motion. Was it just Po’s imagination or was Baron Sweetcheeks sweating? Po decided to unplug the treadmill, just in case. The baron collapsed gratefully into a soft pile of cedar chips.
Ms. Minerva pulled out a small stepladder. While she reached for the power cord to the PA speakers, Jodi turned to her friends. “We should all go with Harper to help Doc at lunch,” she whispered.
“Sure,” said Ash. But Morgan elbowed her.
“Don’t forget, Ash. We’ve got to do that thing today.”
Ash looked confused for a moment. Then her eyes went wide. “Oh, right! We have that thing. That…make-up quiz.”
Jodi shrugged. “Okay. What about you, Po?”
“Po has to take the quiz, too,” Morgan said.
Po didn’t know what Morgan and Ash were talking about. But Morgan winked at him over Jodi’s head, and Po knew he was supposed to play along.
“Yeah, right. The quiz,” Po said, trusting that Morgan would explain everything later.
Unless there really was a quiz that Po had forgotten about. The way this day was going, it almost wouldn’t surprise him.
The speakers brayed like a donkey as Ms. Minerva finally pulled the plug.
Doc was more flustered than Harper had ever seen her. The teacher was wearing an overstuffed tool belt and a slightly panicked expression. She kept dabbing her forehead with a handkerchief.
“I appreciate the help,” she said, looking from Harper to Jodi. “This is too big a job for me alone.”
Harper smiled widely. Doc Culpepper was her favorite teacher. That was because Doc didn’t just teach science, she lived it! She had worked in a government laboratory before coming to Woodsword. And she still experimented in her free time. The amazing VR goggles that allowed them to enter Minecraft were just one example of Doc’s handiwork. Though Doc didn’t know just how powerful her goggles were.
Doc had a reputation for letting experiments and inventions get out of hand. Even so, could she really be responsible for the chaos affecting the school?
Doc held up a clipboard. “Before we can fix the problem, we need to determine how extensive it is. I’ve written down all the malfunctions I’ve seen so far. But there are a few more areas to check.”
Doc led them to the auditorium first. Harper knew the drama club used that space for their performances and rehearsals. She was expecting to find problems with the stage lights or the sound equipment.
She was not expecting snow.
“It’s magic!” Jodi cried. She ran in tight little circles through the snow that drifted down from the high ceiling. “Magic is real! I knew it all along and no one listened to me, Harper!”
Harper stuck out her tongue to catch a snowflake. It didn’t melt, but it quickly got soggy. She flicked it away.
“It’s paper,” she said. “Confetti. Special effects.”
Jodi slid through the artificial snow. “Stage magic is still magic!” she insisted.
Doc jotted a note on her clipboard. “The drama club spent an entire afternoon loading up their snow cannons. They are not going to be happy about this.”
“Neither are the janitors,” Harper said. She kicked a little pile of paper snowflakes. “I hear the vacuums aren’t exactly working, either.”
Doc sighed, nodded, and wrote another note on her clipboard. “Let’s move on,” she said.
As they trailed Doc to their next stop, Jodi cleared her throat. “I know nobody wants to be the first to say it. But I think we need to discuss the possibility that gremlins are behind all this.”
“Gremlins?” said Harper. “The little green creatures? People used to blame them for all sorts of problems, right?”
“I don’t think they mean to cause trouble,” Jodi said, her tone completely serious. “But they enjoy riding the electrostatic fields of the stratosphere. As you can imagine, that can really mess things up.”
Harper grinned. She had no idea where Jodi came up with this stuff.
“I’m afraid there’s a simpler explanation,” said Doc. “Human error.” She rummaged through her tool belt and pulled out a tiny computer chip. “I wanted Woodsword to be the most advanced school in the county. So I networked the whole school. I put a computer chip in, well, everything. And now everything is broken.”
Harper’s heart felt a little heavy when she saw her teacher so defeated.
“That doesn’t mean you’re to blame,” Harper said. “It might be a hardware issue. Maybe the computer chips were faulty? Or it might be a software problem. We could double-check the code that keeps everything automated.”
“Or it could be gremlins,” Jodi added, her eyes shifting back and forth as if on the lookout for mythical creatures. “Or bad unicorns.”
This time, Doc chuckled. “Yes, of course. It could be any of those things. Even gremlins.”
The smile on Doc’s face didn’t last long. It fell away as soon as th
ey entered the cafeteria, where the automated potato masher had mashed the day’s supply of potatoes to liquid. The automated potato scooper was splattering that liquid across the room.
“I’ll take things from here, girls,” Doc said. She rolled up her sleeves, lowered her safety goggles, and walked boldly toward the potato bar.
“I’ve always wondered why she wears those things everywhere,” Jodi said.
“Poor Doc,” said Harper. “This is every scientist’s worst nightmare.”
“At least it’s not throwing pineapples,” Jodi said. She looked over at the students who were still eating their lunches. They had all crammed together outside the potato scooper’s impressive reach.
“Hmmm,” said Jodi. She took out her notebook. “Shawn Liptervoken is carrying around a tenor saxophone case. But I was sure he played alto saxophone. And…Hey!” She pointed. “There’s Morgan and the others. I thought they were busy.”
Harper shrugged and smiled. “They must have finished early.”
“I guess so,” Jodi said. But Harper saw her narrow her eyes in suspicion before writing something down in her notebook.
They returned to the game that afternoon.
Ash breathed a sigh of relief as her blocky avatar took form. She was standing in the desert burrow they’d built the night before. Part of her had worried that the school’s tech problems might cause their headsets to glitch. But she was too curious about the desert mineshaft to wait any longer.
She could tell Morgan felt the same. His avatar rubbed its cube hands together. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, “about how to handle those vexes. Or rather…about how not to handle them.”
Ash nodded. “Let’s hear it.”
“We keep taking the direct approach,” Morgan went on. “But there’s always more than one way to do something in Minecraft. Why walk up to those vexes and get into a fight when we can go around them?”
“You want to look for a back door?” asked Po.
“I want to make a back door,” Morgan answered. “Also, why do you look like a rabbit?”
Po struck a pose, modeling his new skin. “It was Jodi’s idea.”
“Let’s forget about Po’s adorable bunny ears and cotton tail for a minute,” said Harper. “Morgan, you want to dig through the mountain?”
“Exactly,” Morgan said. “If we dig through the rock, we should eventually intersect the mineshaft. Then we can avoid a fight.”
“Sounds sensible to me,” Ash said.
“Especially given the state of my sword,” Jodi said. She held up a broken iron blade. “It shattered the last time I used it.”
Morgan rolled his eyes. “Jodi, you have to take care of your equipment! You should have said something.”
“I’m saying something now,” Jodi said.
“Why don’t you sit this mission out,” Morgan suggested. “You can be our lookout. Hang back and make sure the vexes don’t follow us.”
Ash knew Jodi wouldn’t like that. Morgan could be overprotective at times, and it always got under his little sister’s skin. If their avatars could blush, Jodi’s face would be bright red.
“You want to leave me here?” she said. Her voice was strained.
“I think we all need to stick together,” Ash said, wanting to head off a situation between the siblings. “If Morgan’s plan works, we won’t even use our weapons.”
“And I can lend Jodi my bow, just in case,” Harper added.
“Fine,” Morgan said. “Just be careful, Jodi.”
“Let’s all be careful,” said Po, his bunny whiskers twitching. “Like always.”
“Let’s gather our beds and make a few torches,” Ash said. “We’ll head out in a minute.” While the others got to work, she pulled Morgan aside. “Hey, go easy on your sister,” she whispered. “For someone who wants to avoid unnecessary fights, it seemed like you were trying to pick one.”
“Sorry,” Morgan whispered. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” Ash prompted.
Morgan sighed. “I just don’t want anything to happen to her. When that wither skeleton attacked her yesterday, my heart almost stopped.”
“But you were there to protect her,” Ash reminded him. “Just like she’s protected you.” She patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good big brother. But Jodi’s a part of this, and there’s no changing that.”
“You’re right.” Morgan nodded.
“Everybody ready?” Harper asked, taking a torch from the wall.
Ash and Morgan shared a look.
“Let’s do it,” Morgan said. “All together.”
* * *
They approached the mountain from the side, staying out of the vexes’ line of sight. In the silence, Ash pondered how strange it was to find those mobs here. It wasn’t just that vexes weren’t supposed to spawn in the desert. They weren’t supposed to spawn anywhere. As far as she knew, they were always created by evokers. And they only existed a few minutes before disappearing.
Since the Evoker King had named himself after the game’s magic-wielding illagers, maybe he had a soft spot for vexes. That made a certain amount of sense, even if nothing else did.
It only took a few minutes of digging through rock to break through to the mineshaft. Their small tunnel opened onto a much wider shaft that ran like a hallway right through the heart of the mountain. There was still sand at their feet, and they were surrounded by stone. But there were also oak columns, and burning torches, and broken rails running along the ground. It looked like something out of an old Western.
Ash slashed at a cobweb with her ax. She picked up the string left behind.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and that’s all I’ll use my ax for today,” she said.
Then she heard a hissing sound in the darkness.
“Or maybe not!” she said.
Red eyes glared at her from a dark corner of the mineshaft. A moment later, a cave spider leapt right at her!
Ash was ready for it. She knocked it from the air with her sword, then followed up with a second slash attack. It hissed again as it flared red and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
“Nice job!” Morgan said. “You didn’t even need any help.”
Ash saw more red eyes turn their way. “I do now!” she said. “Swords up, everyone!”
A host of spiders emerged from the dark. They skittered along the floor and up the walls.
“Where are they all coming from?” Harper asked.
“There must be a spawner nearby,” said Ash. “Cover me!”
She ran right into the midst of the spiders. Her friends were just behind her, swinging swords and firing arrows. They were doing a good job of drawing the spiders’ attention. But they’d be overwhelmed soon.
In the dim light, Ash almost missed it: a single cube-shaped monster spawner set into a corner of the mineshaft. It looked like a cage with a small spider inside.
Ash swapped her regular ax for her pickaxe. She swung the pickaxe once, twice, a third time—the spawner shattered!
But they still had to deal with the spiders that had already spawned. With no time to swap her tool, Ash leapt into the fray with her pickaxe. It worked well, particularly since she was attacking the spiders from behind.
Her friends were on the other side of the wall of arachnids. Morgan, Harper, and Po were all attacking with swords. Jodi was using the bow but seemed hesitant.
When an arrow almost hit Ash, she understood why Jodi looked so unsure.
“Sorry, Ash!” Jodi cried. “I’m not used to aiming these things.”
“No harm done,” Ash said. But the sooner this battle was over, the better.
“Agh!” Po cried. Ash saw the last spider had pounced on him. It sank its fangs into his arm. “Help!”
Jodi drew her bowstring, but Po and the spider were moving around too much. “I’m afraid I’ll hit him!” she said.
The others all rushed forward. Harper got there first, ending the spider with a single swing of her sword.
“Thanks,” Po said. But Harper was already on the move, excitedly scooping up all the spider eyes that had been left behind.
Ash helped Po to his feet. He swayed, looking unsteady.
“I don’t feel so good,” he said.
“I think you got poisoned, buddy,” Morgan said. “You should eat something.”
“That was a dirty trick,” Jodi said. “The Evoker King obviously put that spider spawner there.”
“Mineshafts usually appear near ore deposits,” Ash said. “I’ll bet this is where he got the materials to build the school.”
“He’s probably long gone, then,” Harper said. “But we should still look around. If he left traps and guards, there must be something here worth protecting.”
“That light,” Jodi said. “Does everybody see that light?”
Ash looked where Jodi was pointing. Most of the light in the mineshaft came from scattered torches. But there was a faint purple glow coming from around the corner.
Ash recognized that shade of purple. She ran toward it, trusting her friends to follow.
When she turned the corner, her suspicion was confirmed. There at the end of the shaft was a ring of obsidian. Within the obsidian was an otherworldly purple glow.
“It’s another portal!” she said.
Woodsword Middle School had gone low-tech.
Doc still hadn’t solved the glitch in the system. Until she did, devices throughout the school were unplugged and powered down.
Ghast in the Machine! (Minecraft Woodsword Chronicles #4) Page 2