The Forgetting Machine (8 page)

“What about paper books? If we had a paper copy of
Charlotte's Web
we could scan it and create a new digital file, right?”

Billy touched the side of his chin with his forefinger. I loved when he did that, even though I knew he'd stolen the gesture from his dad.

“I suppose we could do a reverse hack. Hack the hacker. But where would we get a paper copy? A museum?”

“Flinkwater Memorial Library,” I said.

“Seriously? I thought that got turned into an old-folks home.”

“Well, a lot of old folks do hang out there,” I said. “But it's closed today, so we can't get in.”

Billy grinned. I'd seen that expression before.

  •  •  •  

Billy used to have a collection of magnetic key cards that gave him access to just about every building in Flinkwater. But back when we got arrested for treason by the Department of Homeland Security, they had confiscated his collection.

“I thought the DHS took your key cards,” I said.

“They did, so I made something better. Check it out.” He sorted through the junk on his desk and came up with what looked like an old-fashioned oversize wristwatch. “I took the guts out and put in an RFID transmitter, smart-mag technology, and a titanium lock pick. I call it the Open Anything Watch. You ready?”

“I don't know. . . . ” I'd been to jail once. I didn't like it.

“You want to read
Charlotte's Web
or not? It's not like we'd be doing anything wrong.”

“Breaking and entering? Stealing a book? Ms. Pfleuger will kill us if we get caught.”

“We won't break anything, and you'd just be
borrowing
the book. That's what libraries are for, right?”

I thought it over for about three seconds. I really did want to read the rest of
Charlotte's Web
.

Billy was disappointed by the lock on the front door of the library.

“It's just a lock,” he said.

It was the old-fashioned type that required a metal key. He'd been hoping for something high-tech so he could show off his Open Anything Watch.

“Does this mean you have to give your watch a new name?” I asked.

“No, it just means it's going to be harder than I thought.” He took off the watch and extracted a long, flexible metal strip from the band. “Lock pick. This might take a few minutes.”

On an impulse, I reached past him and twisted the doorknob. The latch clicked and the door swung open. Billy looked at me, astonished.

“How did you do that?”

“Magic.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Or maybe Ms. Pfleuger forgot to lock it,” I said as we slipped through the door into the empty library. The air was dead still; motes of dust hovered nearly motionless in the air, lit up by the sun coming through the windows. Billy looked around at the shelves of books.

“Wow, that's a lot of paper.”

“You've never been here before?”

“Not since I was a little kid. Where are the computers? How are we going to find the book you want?”

I pointed out the
COMPUTER-FREE ZONE
sign on the back wall. “I think the book will be in the children's section.” I started toward the corner where they kept the kids' books, but was stopped by the most chilling sound imaginable—that of my name being spoken by a large, largely insane librarian.

“Ginger Crump!”

I froze. Ms. Pfleuger, wearing a dark green muumuu decorated with red and gold snakes, rose up from behind her desk like Godzilla rising from the ocean.

“The library is closed,” she said, coming toward us. As she got closer, I could see that what I'd thought were red and gold snakes were actually strings of flowers printed on her dress. Which did not make her any less scary—snakes, flowers . . . she still looked like Godzilla.

“The door was open!” I squeaked. At least it sounded squeaky to me.

“We didn't do anything!” Billy was sounding a little squeaky too.

The Pformidable Pfleuger fixed her flamethrower eyes on us.

“Why. Are. You. Here?” she inquired terrifyingly.

“I want to check out a book!” I shrieked. Okay, it wasn't really a shriek, but it was close.

Ms. Pfleuger halted her advance. The fire in her eyes abated.

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

“I do! I do like books! I
love
books!”

Ms. Pfleuger crossed her arms and regarded us suspiciously.

“Seriously,” I said. “I was hoping I could check out
Charlotte's Web
.”

“I thought you intended to read that . . .
electronically
.” She practically spat out that last word.

“I was, but there's sort of a problem.”

“Oh?” She cocked her head and waited for more.

“The e-book got hacked.” I showed her some of the altered text on my tab. “It's not just my tab; it's everywhere.” As Ms. Pfleuger listened, I saw a grim smile spread slowly across her face. She
liked
that the e-books had been corrupted.

“We think the Tisks did it,” I said.

“The Tisks?” That seemed to make her even happier.

“We haven't
proved
it was the Tisks,” Billy said. “But we're pretty sure it was somebody in Flinkwater.”

“But we can fix it,” I said. “We just need a hard copy of Charlotte so we can scan it and unhack the hack.”

“I see. So it seems
real
books are important after all?” She loomed over us triumphantly.

“Yes! I was wrong!”

“Important enough for you to break into my library? We're closed on Sunday, you know.”

“We didn't actually break anything,” I said. “The door was open. Er . . . how come you're here, anyway?”

“That is not your concern. In any case, your felonious efforts have gone for naught. Our only copy of
Charlotte's Web
is checked out.”

“No!” I couldn't believe it. “By who?”

“Whom,”
said Ms. Pfleuger.

“
Whom
checked it out?”

“Who,”
said Ms. Pfleuger.

I will
never
understand that who/whom business!

Ms. Pfleuger said, “I'm afraid I can't share information about our patrons' library records.”

“But what about all those kids all across the country who are right this minute reading
Charlotte's Web
on their tabs, and instead of a spider and a pig talking, it's a couple of humans? We need to fix this!”

That made an impression. Ms. Pfleuger thought for a moment, then said, “Mycroft Duchakis was here yesterday afternoon.”

“Myke? Myke has Charlotte?”

“I really can't say,” she said, looking away.

I turned to Billy, but he had wandered off and was standing over by Ms. Pfleuger's desk.

“I thought this was supposed to be a computer-free zone,” he said.

“Get away from there!” Ms. Pfleuger snapped.

Billy backed away from her desk.

“I think it's time for you two to leave,” Ms. Pfleuger said in a firm voice.

That sounded like a good idea to me. I grabbed Billy and pulled him toward the exit, but not before I got a glimpse of the D-Monix 15395 computer on Ms. Pfleuger's desk.

“Out!” she commanded, thrusting a forefinger at the door.

We got out.

“Now what?” Billy asked.

“Myke Duchakis has Charlotte! At least I think that's what she was telling us. I'm going over there.”

“I should probably check on my webhound program and see if it's chewed through all those proxies yet.”

“Okay, you do that, and I'll go get the book from Myke.”

We took off in opposite directions.

Dark-skinned, rotund Myke Duchakis came from his room, bearing a basket of sleeping multicolored kittens.

“Oh,” he said, “I thought you were Mrs. Gumm.”

“Do I
look
like Mrs. Gumm?” Addy Gumm was the town's cat lady, and she was a thousand years old at least.

“Not really,” Myke said. “Umm . . . do you want a kitten?”

“No thanks. How many do you have there?”

“I'm not actually sure. At least six. Possibly eight. They're exhausted from terrorizing my chinchilla. He's in his exercise ball, quivering with fear.”

One of the kittens—a black one—raised its head and said “Eep?”

“Are you sure you don't want one?”

“Pretty sure,” I said. They
were
awfully cute.

“Did you know that cats were considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians?”

“I did not know that,” I said.

Myke is crazy for all kinds of animals. He is the founder and president of AAPT, which stands for Animals Are People Too. He volunteers at Clawz-n-Pawz, our local animal adoption agency.

Myke's adoptive parents have lived in Flinkwater forever—his dad used to play for the Flinkwater Brazen Bulls, our high school football team, and he now coaches them. Myke's mom grew up on a farm near Halibut, but Myke's biological parents were from northern Africa. He likes to think of himself as a royal descendent of the Egyptian pharaohs. Whatever you do, don't get him started on the Sphinx—he'll talk your ears off.

“They used to mummify the pharaoh's pet cats,” he said. “That way when the pharaoh died, he would have a friend waiting for him in the afterlife.” One of the kittens had crawled out of the basket and was climbing up Myke's shirt. “Mrs. Gumm promised to take one of the kittens. And Ernie Rausch might take one, but I still need homes for the rest of them.”

“Ernie Rausch? Are you talking about
Ernest
Rausch, the memory expert?”

“Yeah, Ernie's a member of AAPT. He used to work in Area 51—you know, that horrible animal-experimentation program ACPOD shut down a couple months ago? Anyway, he says he misses the animals, so he's taking a lot of them and keeping them at his farm—animals nobody else will adopt. You know that place just north of town? Happy Smile?

“I've seen the sign.” It was hard to miss: a giant, white-toothed, pink-lipped, disembodied grin with
HAPPY SMILE ACRES
arched across the top.

“Ernie's dad was a dentist, but he's gone now, so it's just Ernie and a bunch of animals. Only he swears he doesn't experiment on them. He just keeps them because he likes them. He says they make him more creative.” Myke looked at the pile of kittens in his arms. “I'm hoping he'll take two. I'd keep them myself but my mom, she thinks it's getting kind of crowded here.”

I couldn't blame her. Last time I visited Myke he had a chinchilla, a monkey, three mice, a pigeon, a gecko, and a three-legged squirrel in his bedroom.

“I met Mr. Rausch's dog yesterday,” I said.

“Which one?”

“A bulldog named Gertrude.”

“Oh yeah. She was a rescue. Nice dog.”

“Speaking of animals, I heard you checked out
Charlotte's Web
from the library. I was wondering if I could borrow it.”

“You want to borrow my borrowed book?” He gently detached the kitten from his shirt and put it back in the basket. “How come all of a sudden everybody wants to read
Charlotte's Web
?”

“What do you mean ‘everybody'?”

“Well, you and Dottie.”

“Dottie? Dottie
Tisk
?”

“Yeah, she volunteers at Clawz-n-Pawz too. She asked me to check it out for her.”

That made sense. If Mr. Tisk had taken the book from her before she finished reading it, Dottie might want it back.

“Dottie will have to wait,” I said. “I need it right now. It's an emergency.”

“Too late. I already gave it to her.”