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Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Macintosh, Cameron. | Atze, Dave, illustrator.
Title: Selfie search / Cameron Macintosh, illustrated by Dave Atze. Description: New York : West 44, 2020. | Series: Max Booth: future sleuth Identifiers: ISBN 9781538384657 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781538384640 (library bound) | ISBN 9781538384664 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Detective and mystery stories. | Street children—Juvenile fiction. | Cell phones--Juvenile fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.M335 Se 2020 | DDC [F]--dc23
Published in 2020 by Enslow Publishing LLC 101 West 23rd Street, Suite #240 New York, NY 10011
Copyright © 2020 Cameron Macintosh. Original edition published in 2017 by Big Sky Publishing.
Cover design and Illustrations: Dave Atze Typesetting: Think Productions
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer.
Printed in the United States of America
CPSIA compliance information: Batch #CS19W44: For further information contact Enslow Publishing LLC, New York, New York at 1-800-542-2595.
Contents
Chapter 1 A Spark of Excitement
Chapter 2 Pedal Powering
Chapter 3 Down to the Ground
Chapter 4 Another Excursion
Chapter 5 Night-time Fright-time!
Chapter 6 A Grave Situation
Chapter 7 Helpful Helen …
Chapter 8 Shiny Squidman
CHAPTER 1
A Spark of Excitement
Has anyone ever told you how hard it is to sleep beside a dreaming beagle-bot? Probably not - most people don’t realize that beagle-bots are meant to be left turned on at night. Their digital dreams help them process the day’s events and store the day’s memories - just like our dreams do. That’s all well and good, but Oscar’s night-time twitching and barking can keep me awake for hours.
This is one of those nights.
I’ve finally drifted into a semi-half, kind-of sleep at 8:05 a.m. when I hear a loud thud above my head. For a moment I think it’s Oscar, leaping up to chase an imaginary cyber-cat. But then I hear a familiar voice.
“Max! Are you awake yet?”
“Well, I am now, Jessie ...”
“Sorry, pal. I kinda thought you’d like to see this one straight away.”
“What’s this one?”
“I was hoping you might be able to tell me!”
I sit up and switch Oscar to fully-awake mode. Then I step out of the packing case we use as our bedroom, and rub my bleary eyes.
My best pal, Jessie, is standing just behind our packing case. She’s holding a black rectangular object in her hand and staring down at it with a puzzled look on her face.
It’s part of Jessie’s job to identify the objects that come to our home - the Bluggsville City Museum storeroom. When she needs help, Oscar and I are always happy to lend a hand, or a metal paw! These little jobs keep us alive. When Jessie identifies a new object, she gets paid a few extra dollars. When we identify an object for her, she gives some of those dollars to us. Oh yeah - she also lets us live in the storeroom for free! We’d probably be living on the street and foraging for food scraps if not for Jessie’s friendship.
I’m yawning as loud as a mooing cow-borg when Jessie hands me the rectangular object. It’s about 12 centimeters long and 6 centimeters wide. One of its sides is shiny, like glass. The other side seems to be coated in protective plastic.
It kind of looks like ... nothing at all. It’s probably the most boring object Jessie’s ever brought to us - at least since the 1986 pencil eraser she’d mistaken for a chunk of 22nd century bubble gum.
“Hmm,” I say, trying not to roll my eyes. “You woke me up for a shiny plastic brick?”
“It’s definitely not construction material,” she laughs. “Have a close look at the ends.”
Jessie hands me the mysterious thing, and I look at it closely from top to bottom. There seems to be a press-able button at one end. At the other, I can see a metal-edged hole that looks like an inbuilt dock, and two little sets of holes that look like tiny speakers. Perhaps there’s slightly more to this than I thought ...
“In my professional opinion,” I say, “I think it’s a pillow warmer from 2098.”
“But look at that input dock,” replies Jessie. “It looks a lot like the electrode dock from a hair-growth stimulator. They were huge in the 2050s.” “No way!” I yelp. “This is definitely some kind of sleep enhancement device. I might need to borrow it if Oscar keeps barking at night!”
We could argue about it all morning, but Oscar has different plans. His ears prick up and he stands on his hind legs like a startled hyper-hamster. Usually, this means he’s seen a robo-rat across the storeroom, but not this time. No, this time, the robo-rat’s right on top of our packing case!
Oscar leaps into my arms and tries to use me as a ladder to get to the top of the case. As he scurries up, I squeeze onto him. He squirms in my arms, but I hold on tight. These ridiculous rat chases usually end badly. Oscar breaks at least one body part, and I have to spend hours putting him back together again.
The robo-rat doesn’t make things any easier. It leaps off the packing case and grabs hold of the nearest ceiling support beam. As it scuttles upward, I can feel Oscar’s body heating up like a frying pan. He’s squiggling like an overgrown cyber-slug. “Oscar!” I yell. ”Control yourself!”
Suddenly he stops still, but it’s not because of anything I’ve said. There’s a shower of sparks flying out of his back end! I have to drop him before he burns any more holes in my T-shirt.
As he slides down my leg, Oscar brushes against the mystery device, which is still in my right hand. A big zap of electricity bolts out of his tail and surges through the device. Oscar crunches into the concrete floor, but for a moment I forget all about him - all of a sudden, the shiny side of the device has started glowing! It definitely seems to be some kind of screen.
It starts off white, then turns a light blue. Then, it goes black again, and a time display flashes across it. As quickly as it appeared, the time vanishes and the display changes again. Now it’s just a black background, filled with rows of colored symbols. At the bottom of the screen there’s an icon of an old-fashioned phone receiver — the prehistoric kind, from when phones plugged into wall sockets! That kind of receiver hasn’t been used for about 360 years, but I recognize it from the Telecommunications History display at the museum.
“This is incredible!” yells Jessie, her face lighting up like Oscar’s sparks. “You’ve just reactivated a mobile phone from the 21st century — the 2030s or 2040s, I’d say.”
Jessie’s a big fan of phones. She’s uncovered lots of old ones that are now part of the museum’s display.
I haven’t been this happy since I rescued Oscar from the Lost Robo-dogs Home three years ago. But my smile only lasts a few seconds - the screen goes blank again, and stays that way. I shake the phone and push the button at the top, but the screen stays just as black and just as blank. As the phone fails to fire up, I feel my face going a very dark shade of red.
“Relax, Max,” says Jessie. “It’s probably just a flat battery. It’s a miracle you got it working in the first place.”
“A ten second miracle isn’t good enough,” I moan. “I’m gonna get this thing working again if I have to swap half its parts with Oscar’s.”
Oscar whimpers and skulks toward the packing case.
“Just kidding, Oscar,” I laugh. “Your parts are far too expensive
to waste on an old telephone!” “Anyway, I’ll have to leave you to it,” says Jessie. “I’ve got two hours to polish up an antique hover-scooter for the 22nd Century Fun and Fitness exhibition.”
“Have fun, Jessie,” I reply. “I’ll hover-scoot into your workshop when I’ve got this hopeless thing working again!”
CHAPTER 2
Pedal Powering
I really should stop making so many big promises. I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to get this phone working again. All I can do is dig through Jessie’s spare-parts boxes and see if anything useful might be lying around.
One thing I do know is — I’ll definitely need some kind of cord that can fit into the input dock. That might give us some hope of connecting it to another source of power.
“Come on, Oscar,” I yell. “Let’s go hunting.”
I tip two boxes over and we spread their contents across the floor. Oscar sniffs at every broken gizmatron or ancient thingami-bot. After a few minutes, he looks up at me with a blank expression on his face.
“Hold on, Oscar,” I say. “What about this old doo-gadget?”
I pick up a black plastic cord that looks like it might have broken off an old pair of headphones. One end is a sprawl of loose wire ends. At the other end, there’s a connector that looks just about the right size to fit the phone’s input dock. I try to slide it in, but it’s slightly too wide.
“I’ve got an idea,” I cry to Oscar. “Put that tail into spin mode!”
A second later, Oscar’s rotating his tail so fast I can barely see it. I slide on a pair of safety goggles and press the edges of the connector against his blurry tail. Sparks fly everywhere - at least this time they’re not coming from Oscar’s back end!
I move the cord away from his tail and look closely at the connector. We’ve definitely ground some of the metal off, but it’s still too big to fit into the dock. I press it against Oscar’s tail one more time.
After a second spray of sparks, the connector finally looks narrow enough to fit the phone. I push it into the dock and it slides in easily. It fits so snugly it doesn’t wobble around, or fall out when I tip the phone upside down.
“That’s a great start,” I say to Oscar. “Now we just need to get some electricity going through it.”
Oscar turns his tail off spin-mode and disappears behind a stack of boxes. Thirty seconds later, he’s back, dragging an old tricycle between his metal jaws. He waves his paw at me and I follow him to an old treadmill in the far corner of the storeroom. He drags the tricycle onto the treadmill, climbs onto it and starts pedaling. The tricycle stays in the same place as he spins the pedals.
“You’re a smart animal, Oscar,” I say with a wink. “But we need something to connect the wheels with the cord and the phone. Otherwise, your pedaling won’t make any electricity.”
Oscar nods slowly, as if to say, Well, yeah, dummy! I snoop through another box of junk that Jessie hasn’t yet found a home for. I find an old teddy bear from the 2070s, a broken toaster from the 1960s, and a make-your-own bubble gum machine from 2160. But it’s something boring — an old bicycle light from the 1990s - that gives me a very big spark of an idea.
“These things made their light from pedal power,” I tell Oscar. “Let’s see if we can connect it to the tricycle ... and then to the phone.”
I shove the loose wire ends into a hole at the bottom of the light. Then, I clip it onto one wheel of the tricycle and ask Oscar to start pedaling. He spins his legs so fast I get dizzy watching them. And then ... absolutely nothing happens.
“Faster, Oscar,” I yell. “This absolutely has to work!”
Oscar pedals so hard his tongue hangs out and steam starts spewing from his joints ... but it suddenly seems to be worth it. The phone flashes white, then blue, then black, and then we see the time display again.
At the top of the screen, there’s now a little icon showing a battery. It’s red, which probably means it won’t last long if Oscar stops pedaling.
“It’s okay, Oscar! Hop off and let me have a go.”
Oscar flops onto the floor and I take his place on the tricycle. As I pedal, Oscar holo-projects an image of the battery graphic into the air above him. At first, it’s only 4 percent charged. After five minutes of pedaling, it creeps up to 10 percent, but I’m already exhausted. I climb off and let Oscar take over, even though he doesn’t look too happy about it.
We keep pedaling in five-minute shifts. After an hour of puffing and panting, we’ve got the phone charged to 82 percent.
“I think that’ll probably be enough for now,” I say to Oscar.
He smirks and thumps his tail on the ground. I think that’s his way of telling me he agrees.
At least we’ve finally made some progress. I slide my finger across the phone’s surface to see what it can still do. As I swipe from screen to screen, I see icons for maps, music, games and quiz questions. It’s all pretty exciting until I press on the quiz and the map buttons, and nothing at all happens.
“Brilliant ...” I groan. “The screen works, but that seems to be about it.”
I click on a few more icons and nearly jump out of my skin when one of them — a little icon of a camera - opens and fills the whole screen. The next thing I know, I’m looking at someone’s digital photo album.
It feels a bit cheeky to open a stranger’s photo album. But then again, the owner’s probably been dead about 350 years. Hopefully they won’t send an army of zombies to show their disapproval!
I tap on the first photo. It’s a close-up of a young man’s face. He’d probably be in his early twenties. He seems to have long hair, tied into a bun at the top of his head. He’s smiling a goofy grin, and there’s a pile of presents and balloons behind him.
I swipe across to the next picture and see the same face, with an even bigger smile. This time he’s wearing a bike helmet. He seems to be in the countryside somewhere, with real trees behind him. I open photo after photo and see the same face in different locations, laughing and smiling into his own camera.
“This is incredible, Oscar!” I yelp. “I really think Jessie needs to see this.”
Oscar scurries off toward Jessie’s workshop, and a minute later, the two of them appear beside the treadmill. Without saying a word, I hold up the phone to Jessie’s eye level.
“Who’s that?” she laughs. “And what’s going on with his hair?”
“No idea, but he definitely liked looking at himself!”
“I wonder if we can find out more about him?” says Jessie.
Oscar seems to think we can. He bleeps loudly enough to get our attention. Then, he shoots a holo-projection of the photo into the air above his head.
Blown up ten times its original size, a little bit of text at the bottom of the photo becomes much easier to read. It’s a time and a date on the photo:
11:12 a.m., October 13, 2017
“Wow,” says Jessie, “2017! This phone’s much older than I thought.”
Oscar projects a collage of photos into the air, and Jessie and I step up and take a closer look at them.
I’ve never seen so many photos of the same face! If you ask me, it’s kind of boring, but Jessie doesn’t seem to think so. She lets out a loud gasp. “Holy cyber-snakes!” she yells. “Take a look at the one on the top right.”
Oscar lowers the top-right photo to eye level and I stare at it as hard as I can. I don’t see anything too exciting about it - it’s the same goofy face in some kind of public park. He seems to be holding a skateboard under his arm - an ancient one, with actual wheels on the bottom.
“Boring!” I groan. “Did this guy do anything but take photos of himself?”
“Look in the background, Max, behind his right shoulder.”
I squint hard and see a metal statue in the background, a long way behind him. “Yeah? All I can see is a rusty old statue.”
“That’s not just any old statue,” says Jessie. “Take a closer look.”
I move right up to the p
rojection, and Oscar makes it even bigger for me. I can now see the statue in much more detail. It’s a woman, cast in bronze. She’s wearing long flowing robes, and a strange hat. She’s also holding some kind of trophy in her left hand.
“Um, still slightly unexcited ...” I say to Jessie.
“That statue is none other than the glorious Nicole Squidman - a famous actor who won hundreds of awards. When she retired from acting, she went on to become Bluggsville’s longest-serving mayor.”
“What’s that trophy she’s holding?”
“It’s an acting award she won in 2012. Back in the 21st century, they used to call these awards Oscars.”
Oscar sits up on his hind legs and does a big bow. “That statue you’re looking at,” says Jessie, “has been missing for about 250 years.”
Selfie Search Page 1
