The Forgetting Machine (15 page)

My dad and I left Billy and Gilly to salvage what they could from Rausch's computer and went over to the barn. We were greeted by a horse, two cows, and a monkey. The horse and cows were confined to their stalls; the monkey was dangling from a miniature trapeze inside a cage. They all had something to say—not in human language, but in neighs, moos, and screechy gibbering—and they were all wearing collars with numbered tags.

“It must be feeding time,” I said.

We gave the cows and the horse some hay and alfalfa. I found a burlap bag full of peanuts and some overripe bananas in a cabinet near the monkey's cage. He seemed to like them.

“You said there were about ten names on the list?” my dad said.

“At least.”

“Then we're still missing some animals.”

“Even if we find them all, it won't do us any good,” I said. “Unless we can figure out how to get the memories out of the animal and back into the person's brain. And we don't know which animal has whose memories.”

“We will,” my dad said. “But right now we should go home, eat dinner, and have a talk about your reckless and irresponsible behavior.”

I looked at him with shock. “If it weren't for me, you wouldn't even know what Rausch has been doing!”

“That doesn't excuse the fact that you put yourself and Billy in extreme danger.”

“But what about Mr. Rausch? He's still free! And Brazie is running around someplace, and you don't even remember our own cat, and who knows what else? And what about the animals? Who's going to take care of them?”

“I'll have a couple of my security guys stay here in case Rausch comes back. They'll make sure the animals are taken care of. As for the rest of it, it's been a long day. We'll deal with it tomorrow.”

  •  •  •  

Gilly and Billy were trying to fit Rausch's computers, Billy's WheelBot, and the damaged drone into Gilly's SUV. Gertrude came bounding up to me and went into her licking routine.

“I'm taking everything to ACPOD,” Gilly said. “There are still traces of the deleted files here. I'll put our techs on it.”

“We're taking Gertrude, too,” Billy said. “Unless you want her.”

Gertrude looked at me and whined.

“I'd love to, but Barney might have a problem.” I turned to Gilly. “I'm sorry your drone got wrecked,” I said.

Gilly shrugged. “It was just a beta. I'm glad it served a useful purpose.” He wedged the drone between the WheelBot and the computers, then shut the tailgate. “I hear you went for quite a ride. You know, the AG-3601 really wasn't designed for human transport.”

“Believe me, it was not intentional.”

  •  •  •  

Dad and I didn't talk much on the way home. I was buzzing inside, remembering the terrifying events of the past couple hours. I couldn't blame him for being mad. What Billy and I did was pretty crazy, and he was right—some really bad things could have happened. On the other hand, nobody else was doing anything about the missing memories, and Rausch was still out there with his REMEMBER machine. I kept thinking about Billy and Gertrude.

When we got home, Mom was waiting with an elaborate feast of microwaved macaroni and cheese and a salad mix from a bag—a typical Sunday dinner at the Crumps. Over dinner, Dad filled her in on the events of the afternoon. Every time he added another detail, she would shoot me her dagger eyes. You might think she'd be mad at Mr. Rausch instead of me, but that's because you don't know my mom. The rest of the meal was pretty much them trying to make me feel bad about being irresponsible.

Did I feel bad? Not really. But I knew better than to argue.

After they released me from their shaming session, I went to my room and checked my tab to see if
Charlotte's Web
had been magically restored. It had not. I thought about Dottie Tisk, probably curled up in her bed reading about Fern and Wilbur and Charlotte. Somehow I made it all Dottie's fault—not just Charlotte, but the whole memory-stealing thing, even though she had nothing to do with it. I guess in some ways I'm like my mom. I don't always get mad at the right person, as I was about to learn.

I thought I'd have trouble getting to sleep that night because my mind was going a thousand miles an hour. It's not every day you have to deal with an angry librarian, a flying disk, a raging bull, and a mad scientist trying to replace your memories with an ancient Greek poem. But I must have been pretty worn out, because I passed out right away after crawling into bed.

I didn't sleep long. I was awakened by a
tap-tap-tap
at my window. I tried to ignore it.

Tap-tap-tap.
I looked at my clock—a few minutes after midnight. I sat up and looked at the window. A pale face stared back at me through the glass.
Tap-tap-tap.

Ghost!
I thought. That only lasted half a second, because I don't believe in ghosts. Usually. But my heart was pounding. I was about to scream for my parents . . . then I recognized the face.

It would have been easier to believe in a ghost. For one thing, my window was twelve feet above the ground, and for another thing, it was Dottie Tisk.

I jumped out of bed and went to the window. Dottie was clinging to the branches of the hackberry tree with one hand and knocking on the glass with her other. I opened the window.

“Hi,” she said, as if this was the most ordinary of meetings.

“Hello,” I replied, then waited to see what remarkable thing would happen next.

“Can I come in?” she said after an awkward silence. “I'm kind of losing my grip here.”

“Clearly,” I said. In my opinion, Dottie had lost her grip a long time ago. I helped her climb inside. “What are you doing here?” I asked unpolitely.

“I brought you this.” She pulled a book from the waistband of her sweatpants.

Charlotte's Web
!

I was gobsmacked.
^I
After our last conversation I figured she'd burn that book before letting me anywhere near it.

“Uh . . . thank you,” I said, taking the book from her.

“I know how hard it is to stop in the middle of a good book,” she said. “I just finished it an hour ago, and I couldn't sleep. But you have to give it back to me when you're done, because I want to read it again.”

“It's that good?”

“I think it might be the best book ever.”

I paged through the first couple of chapters. Everything seemed to be in order—Wilbur was still a pig, and Charlotte could talk. “You really didn't have to. I mean, it could have waited until tomorrow.”

Dottie shook her head fiercely. “I might forget. I forget things a lot.”

“You and a lot of other people.”

“My mom says I have a mind like a sieve. I mean, I know I read that book once before, but I couldn't remember what happened in the end.” She sat down on my bed. “It's strange, because some things I remember really well. I can remember all of Father's sermons, even the boring ones.”

“Aren't sermons
supposed
to be boring?”

Dottie's eyes flashed. “Father can be quite compelling.”

“I'm sure he can,” I said.

Dottie sighed. “But mostly you're right. He just says the same things over and over, mostly Bible quotes, and I already know the Bible word for word.” Dottie stared at the floor.

“Thank you for the book,” I said.

Dottie nodded and stood up. “I should get back.” She looked out the window at the hackberry tree. “Um, do you think I could use your door?”

“Sure, only we have to be quiet. My mom gets cranky if I wake her up.”

We made it downstairs without incident, and I let her out the front door.

“Good night,” I said. “I'll get the book back to you as soon as I'm done.”

Dottie walked off down the sidewalk. I looked at the book in my hand, then went back to my room to read.

  •  •  •  

I finished reading
Charlotte's Web
at three a.m. Dottie was right. It was a really good book. I dreamed of pigs and spiders.

I
. I've been waiting my whole life to use that word.

My mom woke me up.

“I know you had an eventful day yesterday,” she said, “but this is ridiculous.”

I squinted blearily at my clock.

“It's not even noon yet,” I said. “No school today. Teachers' conferences, remember?”

She arched one perfect eyebrow and zeroed in on the book lying next to my pillow. “I see you found the book you were looking for.”

“I borrowed it from Dottie Tisk. How come you're not at work?”

“I have been at work since seven o'clock this morning. I just came home to make sure you had emerged from your coma.”

“I have emerged,” I informed her.

“Emerge some more.”

I sat up. “Is Dad home?”

“Your father is at work, trying to untangle the can of worms you and Billy Bates opened yesterday.”

“Hey, I didn't put the worms in the can,” I said.

“Be that as it may, he has requested your presence. He and Gilly are in the neuroprosthetics department working on Ernest Rausch's computer.”

  •  •  •  

Dad had taken his WheelBot to work, so I had to walk. The ACPOD laboratories were a mile away, so I brought Charlotte along to keep me company. I don't know why, but I wanted to read the really sad part again. I read as I walked, and it was an unseasonably hot and humid day, and the sad part was really sad, so I arrived at the labs exuding fluids from my pores
and
my eyes. I know that sounds quite unattractive. It was.

“Are you okay?” asked Ms. Ketter, who was manning—or rather, womanning—the security desk.

“I'm fine,” I said. I showed her the book. “I was just reading something sad.”

“I read that book,” Ms. Ketter said, smiling. “It's not sad in the end.”

“I was rereading the sad part.”

Ms. Ketter seemed to understand that. “Are you here to see your father?”

I nodded and stepped over to the scanner. Since the events of last summer, ACPOD had upped its security systems. If you don't have an employee badge you have to go through all sorts of procedures—fingerprints and so forth. Even I, the daughter of Director of Cyber-Security Services Royce Crump, had to submit to a retina scan.

My retinas passed, even with the drying tears to obscure them.

  •  •  •  

I had never been in the neuroprosthetics lab before. It was surprisingly small, with a single workbench and only one computer terminal. Gilly, my dad, and Billy were sitting in front of the display. Gertrude was sleeping on a folded towel in the corner.

I watched Billy flip through screen after screen of what looked like gibberish.

“That doesn't look good,” I observed.

My dad nodded. “It's not. Rausch erased most of his files and encrypted the rest. Our standard decryption programs aren't working.”

“I'm running some nonstandard ones now,” Billy said.

“We were hoping you could remember more of what you saw when you looked at his client key,” Gilly said. “See if you can reproduce a line or two, character for character. That will give our pattern-recognition system something to key off of.”

I wasn't sure I could do that, but I sat down at the keyboard and tried. I typed,

It didn't look quite right. “I think there was a two-digit number after the Latin.”

“Assuming that it identified a specific animal, that would make sense,” Gilly said. “All the animals had numbers on their tags. Try zero one.”

I did so. It still looked wrong. I tried the only other line I remembered.