The Forgetting Machine (18 page)

“That is outrageous!” Mr. Tisk exclaimed. “She is my daughter, and she will do what I say!” He shoved me aside and pushed past Billy and headed for the stairwell. Alfred, who was quicker on his motilators than I gave him credit for, quickly caught up with Mr. Tisk.

“Excuse me, sir. I detect a fly on your nose.”

Fortunately for Mr. Tisk, Billy had made some adjustments to Alfred's hydraulic arms, dialing back the power to reduce the number of holes punched in the walls. Unfortunately for Mr. Tisk, he hadn't dialed it back all the way. Alfred's pneumatic arm shot out and connected solidly with Mr. Tisk's nose.

  •  •  •  

Things got very noisy and confusing after that. Mrs. Tisk became hysterical and insisted on calling an ambulance, even though Mr. Tisk's nose wasn't actually broken—it was just bleeding a little. Dottie and Myke came running upstairs to see what was going on. Dottie started screaming when she saw the blood on her father's face. Gilly arrived home right in the middle of the drama, and the kittens got out of their basket and were running all over the house. I called my parents, and they both arrived at the same time as the ambulance. Alfred made a large pot of tea, killed an actual fly, and set about cleaning Mr. Tisk's blood out of the carpet. It was all very confusing, but we finally got things sorted out.

Mrs. Tisk accompanied her husband to the hospital. My mom contacted Dottie's grandparents, and they said they'd be happy to have Dottie stay with them. My mom said she'd give Dottie a ride, and they left together. My dad and Gilly had to get back to the ACPOD neuroprosthetics lab to try to reverse engineer the REMEMBER machine. Mr. Rausch would not be much help, according to Gilly. He had loaded the entirety of
Wikipedia
into his brain.

“All of it?” I said.

“So it seems,” said Gilly. “All eight hundred million pages.”

“That's a lot.”

“Yes. It didn't leave room for anything else. And he did it without an animal to store his deleted memories. I'm afraid Ernest Rausch doesn't even remember his own name. He'll probably have to be toilet trained all over again.”

Myke had captured all the kittens and had them back in their basket. “I'm going to take these back to Clawz-n-Pawz,” he said. “Let me know if you change your mind, Billy. This little orange one likes you.”

After Myke left, it was just me, Billy, and Alfred.

“That was a pretty good punch, Alfred,” I said.

“I am programmed to eliminate many varieties of invasive species,” Alfred said.

“Anyway, good job.”

“Thank you.”

Billy and I watched him roll off on his motilators.

“I think we're going to have to do some more tweaking,” Billy said.

“I kind of like him the way he is.”

Billy laughed, then said, “By the way, I got a hit on your e-book hacker.”

I had almost forgotten about that. “Was it the Tisks?”

“Nope.”

I waited for more.

“You're not even going to believe this,” Billy said.

“You again,” said Ms. Pfleuger.

I was standing in front of her desk with my arms crossed, looking up at her.

“It was you,” I said.

She tipped her head quizzically. “Me?”

“You hacked the e-books.” I looked to make sure Billy was still with me. He was, but he was standing back a ways, looking rather nervous.

“Oh. That.” She laughed. “My little demonstration.”

“Demonstration!” I said.

“Yes. In every sense of the word. I hope that you will take the lesson to heart.”

I stared at her in disbelief.
“Lesson?”

“Yes. Storing information digitally is dangerous and unreliable. Books, on the other hand”—she gestured at the thousands of books surrounding us—“are solid, real, and dependable.”

“What if your library catches on fire?” Billy asked.

“If these books are destroyed, there are still thousands of other copies in other libraries all over the world. But if an e-book is damaged, every other copy of that e-book might suffer the same fate, as you have seen.” She looked at me. “What did you do when your digital copy of
Charlotte's Web
was altered?”

“I looked for the paper-book version,” I admitted.

“Exactly.”

“But you broke the law,” I said. “And what about all the kids who are trying to read
Charlotte's Web
on their tabs?”

“I feel bad about that.” Ms. Pfleuger looked slightly chastened. “But you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.”

“It's got nothing to do with omelets!”

“True,” she said, looking down at her lap.

“And kids are not eggs. You're supposed to be a librarian.”

“I
am
a librarian!” she said, her face slowly reddening.

I was too mad to be scared, so I just kept on going. “Every kid who tried to read Charlotte over the last few days thinks it's a really awful book that doesn't make any sense at all.”

“It was just for a few days,” she said in a small voice. Her eyes looked funny, or at least what I could see of them through those thick glasses. “I changed it back this morning.” Her voice sounded funny too. She held up the laptop on her desk and turned the screen toward us. “See?
Charlotte's Web
has been restored to its original version.”

A tear dribbled down her cheek. The Pformidable Pfleuger was crying.

Suddenly all the anger drained out of me.

“But
why
?” I asked.

She pushed up her glasses and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, looking anything but pformidable. “It was not my finest moment,” she said.

“How?” Billy asked. “That was a first-class worm you set loose. How did you know how to do that?”

“It was a simple hack, really.” Ms. Pfleuger took out a paisley handkerchief and blew her nose. “I haven't always been a librarian, you know. Up until ten years ago I worked for your father as a software engineer. But then I decided to follow my dream of being a librarian. I just really love books.”

“E-books are books too,” I said.

“I know that.” She sighed. “But I worry that people will forget paper books the same way we've forgotten scrolls and stone tablets. I wrote that virus a few months ago, just to see if it could be done. I didn't plan to use it, but then that awful man Mr. Tisk showed up, and . . . I was afraid he'd convince the town council that my library was irrelevant. We've been having money problems, you see. The council is already cutting back our funding. They say that Flinkwater County Library—with all their computers—better meets the needs of the people. Flinkwater Memorial could be shut down.

“So I set the virus loose. Just for one book,
Charlotte's Web
. Just to show people how important it is to have
real
books. I always intended to change it back.” She blew her nose again. “I see now that maybe it wasn't such a good idea.”

“I don't see why we can't have both paper books and e-books,” I said.

“Perhaps you are right. I don't suppose e-books will be going away.”

Billy said, “You know, I still remember coming here when I was a little kid. You used to have Saturday story time, remember?”

Ms. Pfleuger nodded. “A lot of kids came here back then.” She looked at me and frowned. “Some of them chewed gum, as I recall.”

“I really liked story time,” Billy said.

“Me too,” I agreed.

“I stopped doing that when the groups got smaller and smaller, and one Saturday nobody showed up.”

“You should start it up again. I bet my cousin Kellan would come. He's three. And I know he's got lots of friends from preschool.”

Ms. Pfleuger smiled sadly. “That would be nice, but I'm afraid I won't be working here for long.” Her shoulders slumped. “I'll lose the library for sure now.”

“Maybe not.” I looked at Billy, and I could tell we were both thinking the same thing. “Everybody makes a mistake now and then, right?”

When I got home, Dad was in the kitchen eating a sandwich. Barney and Mr. Peebles were both there, looking lovingly up at him. Or maybe they were looking at his sandwich.

“Dad,” I said, “we have to save the library.”

He said, “The library needs saving?”

“Yes! Ms. Pfleuger says the city council is going to take away their funding.”

“I thought you weren't a big fan of paper books.” He took a big bite of his sandwich.

“I'm not, but . . . Is that tuna fish?”

He nodded, chewing.

“I thought you didn't like fish,” I said.

“I don't,” he said. “But for some reason I had a yen for tuna. By the way, I have good news. Gilly figured out how the REMEMBER machine works. I got my missing memories back. I remember Barney now. It turned out to be quite simple. The animals where our memories were stored have wireless transmitters implanted in their cerebellums. All that's necessary to reverse the process is to put that headset on and let the machine run for a few minutes with the animal nearby. The tricky part was matching up the right animal with the right person. We were able to unscramble enough of Rausch's notes to do that. Billy's memories are stored in that bulldog, as you know. Next time you see him, he should be back to the old Billy.”

“What animal were your memories in?”

“Mr. Peebles here.”

“Mrowp,” said Mr. Peebles.

“Maybe that's why you're eating tuna fish,” I said. “Some of his cat memories might have leaked into your brain.”

He looked at the sandwich in his hand and set it down. “That had not occurred to me.”

“It might also explain why Mr. Peebles risked his life to save me. Because part of
you
was inside
him
.”

He regarded Mr. Peebles thoughtfully, then tore the remains of his sandwich in half and gave it to the cats. “That might also explain some other odd thoughts I've been having. I keep seeing the words ‘some pig.'”

“Dad, that's from
Charlotte's Web
!”

“Really? I'd love to read that book!”

“I gave it back to Dottie Tisk. It's her favorite book ever.”

“Interesting. Dottie's missing memories were also stored in Mr. Peebles. There must have been some leakage.”

“Dad! Gross!” I was horrified. It's one thing to have a father who is part cat, but a dad who is part teenage girl . . . that was too much.

“Speaking of cats, your friend Myke Duchakis just stopped by with a basket full of kittens,” he said. “I told him we had all the cats we could handle. He's a very nice young man. Quite handsome, don't you think? Ginger? Are you okay?”

“Sorry. I just threw up a little in my mouth.” I didn't tell him that Dottie had a crush on Myke. It would only confuse him more.

“You should go rinse it out,” he suggested.

“Good idea.” As I left the room I heard somebody—I couldn't tell whether it was Mr. Peebles or my dad—say, “Meow.”

  •  •  •  

Okay, kind of weird having a dad who was part cat and part Dottie Tisk, but even worse would be having a fiancé who was part bulldog. I grabbed my dad's WheelBot and took off for the neuroprosthetics lab.

I was too late. I arrived at the lab just as they were disconnecting Billy from the Rauschinator. Gertrude was on the floor next to him licking her butt.

“Billy?” I said.

Billy looked at me. His eyes lit up and he smiled.

“Ginger!” He got out of the chair and came toward me and wrapped his arms around me, and he—

—licked my face.