Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race

by Chris Grabenstein

  Kyle tapped it in. The red warning lights flashed again. The LED scroll warned that he had one more try.

  “You’ll never catch us!” they heard Angus shout from somewhere not too far away.

  “We better head back to the bookmobile,” said Abia.

  “No,” said Kyle. “We have one more shot.”

  “But if you are wrong, the alarms will sound!”

  “I know.”

  Kyle closed his eyes. Concentrated. Mr. Lemoncello always used R-E-A-D. Mr. Raymo changed it, though. “Open sesame” was backward at his mansion. So was the scratched code on the fence outside his childhood home.

  Could it be that simple?

  It was worth a try.

  He put his fingers on the keypad.

  “Yo, bro,” said Miguel. “Be ready to run if you’re wrong.”

  “I will,” said Kyle.

  Kyle tapped 3-2-3-7 on the keyboard—the numbers for R-E-A-D if you spelled it backward.

  He heard a whirr, a clank, and a KERTHUNK.

  The front door whooshed open.

  “Come on!” Kyle, Abia, and Miguel leapt inside and shouldered the vault door shut.

  They heard tires squealing.

  The bookmobile had just taken off—hopefully with Akimi and Angus inside.

  “We’re in,” said Kyle, his heart pounding.

  He took a deep breath.

  The library lobby was eerily dark and quiet. Someone had switched off Mr. Lemoncello’s trickling fountain. The only illumination came from sporadic security lights mounted on the walls.

  “Let’s head down to the basement,” whispered Kyle. “But no flashlights until we’re safe in the stacks.”

  The trio tiptoed into the Rotunda Reading Room, which was already being set up for the Grand Gala the next night.

  “They’re using the same new exhibits,” said Miguel.

  Ghostly green hologram grids for Thomas Edison, Emily Dickinson, Michael Jordan, the Wright brothers, and Abraham Lincoln were arrayed around the floor of the rotunda like figures in a wax museum.

  The holographic Mr. Lemoncello was there, too, but he wasn’t alone. That Supreme Court justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., was posed next to him, sitting behind an elevated judge’s bench, a gavel poised in his hand.

  “My guess,” said Abia, “is they have programmed the three-D Lemoncello image to make some sort of public confession tomorrow night during the gala.”

  She was probably right. The stiff Mr. Lemoncello was holding a board game in his hands as if it were a cafeteria tray. “Family Frolic by Irma Hirschman” was printed boldly across the box top. This is so unfair, thought Kyle. He knew the good guys didn’t always win. But he was going to make sure Mr. Lemoncello at least had a fighting chance!

  “This way, you guys,” whispered Miguel. “Andrew and I took these steps over—”

  He stopped talking when they saw the silhouette of a short, shadowy, bald-headed figure scurry into the room.

  Mr. Raymo.

  “Hello?” he said, squinting into the darkness. “Is anybody here?”

  Kyle snapped on his flashlight. Waved.

  “Good!” said Mr. Raymo in a hushed voice. “You were able to crack my rudimentary code.”

  Suddenly, they heard footsteps clomping down one of the spiral staircases.

  “Quick,” said Mr. Raymo. “Hide! It’s the Krinkles!”

  “Under the tables, guys,” said Kyle, snapping off his flashlight.

  Kyle ducked under one of the reading tables. Abia and Miguel followed his lead—each one hiding beneath a different table to increase the odds of at least one of them not getting caught.

  “There you are,” Kyle heard one of the Krinkle brothers, the grumpier one, Frederick, say. “The shoebox wasn’t in the Lemoncello-abilia Room.”

  “Which,” said the other brother, David, “we need to padlock before tomorrow night.”

  “On it,” said Mr. Raymo, tapping on his tablet computer, playing along.

  “We’ll continue the search for Luigi’s legendary shoebox later,” said Frederick. “Right now we need to locate whatever other new game ideas he’s been dreaming up, so we can send them along to our design department and watch them become brand-new Krinkle Brothers games!”

  What? Kyle fumed to himself. No way was he going to let that happen. The Krinkles would take all of Mr. Lemoncello’s brilliant ideas and make them stinkle!

  “Where’s Luigi’s office, Chet?” demanded David.

  Mr. Raymo led the Krinkle brothers back to the fiction wall and opened the secret bookcase panel. The second the hidden door swung shut, Kyle, Abia, and Miguel scrambled out of their hiding places.

  “Okay, Miguel,” said Kyle. “Mr. Raymo just bought us some time. Take us to that shoebox.”

  “Follow me.”

  They scampered across the marble floor to the staircase that led down to the basement and the stacks—the place where the library stored its collection of research materials that couldn’t be checked out but only used in the building.

  “I hope I can remember where we put that stuff,” said Miguel nervously.

  Kyle hoped he could, too.

  Switching on their flashlights, Kyle, Abia, and Miguel made their way down the steps into the library’s cavernous basement.

  In the dim light, Kyle could see that the very long, very wide cellar was just as he remembered it: filled with tidy rows of floor-to-ceiling shelving units, all of them jam-packed with cardboard cartons.

  “I hope the shelves don’t start attacking you again,” joked Miguel.

  When Kyle had come down to the stacks searching for a clue in the escape game, the walls of heavy metal bookcases automatically slid and skated around, forming a moving maze that nearly crushed him.

  “Me too,” said Kyle.

  The shelving units were individually labeled with red LED signs that glowed in the dark like cat eyes. They were in a section filled with magazines from the 1940s.

  “We put the boxes with stuff from Mr. Lemoncello’s early business career on a shelf labeled ‘The Imagination Factory/Year One.’ ”

  “So where is it?” asked Kyle.

  “I remember it was pretty close to the book-sorting machine,” said Miguel. “I think.”

  “Great,” said Kyle. “Lead the way.”

  Miguel headed up one wall of shelves, turned down an alleyway where that wall ended, turned left, then right, then right again, and right one more time. A shadow flickered across the wall.

  “What was that?” gasped Miguel.

  “My flashlight,” said Kyle.

  “Don’t do that, man!”

  “You have no idea where you put those boxes, do you, Miguel Fernandez?” demanded Abia after they ended up back where they had started.

  “The lights were on when we did it,” said Miguel.

  “Think, Miguel,” said Kyle. “This is really, really important.”

  “I’m sorry. But when Andrew and I were organizing the boxes, we just basically loaded up the robots and followed them to the right spot.”

  “The robots!” said Kyle.

  The Lemoncello Library employed an army of robotic, computerized book carts that crawled around on tank treads through the stacks finding requested research material.

  Kyle dug the Nonfictionator out of his backpack and scrolled through the options for the universal remote.

  “Robotic Research Assistant” was listed right after “Refrigerator.”

  Kyle thumbed the robot icon.

  With the hum of an electric motor and a whoosh of hydraulics, a robotic cart with blinking green headlights scooted up the aisle. It stopped at Kyle’s feet and just sat there. Blinking at him.

  “Now what?” said Abia.

  “You have to tell it what you’re looking for,” said Miguel, stepping forward. “Hello, Researchio.”

  The robot scanned Miguel’s face with its green lasers.

  “That’s its facial recognition software kicking in,”
he explained. “Andrew and I were prescreened to use the robots so we wouldn’t have to go upstairs to the reference desk every time we wanted to move a box.”

  “Welcome back, MIGUEL FERNANDEZ,” blurped the robot. “How may I be of research assistance today?”

  “We’re looking for Luigi Lemoncello’s original patent and accompanying materials for the board game titled Family Frenzy.”

  “One moment,” said the robot. “One moment. Searching. Searching. I have an original patent document and accompanying materials for a board game titled Family Frenzy in section twelve. Is that what you are searching for, MIGUEL FERNANDEZ?”

  “Yes,” said Abia. “That is precisely what he asked you to find.”

  “Yo, Abia, ease up,” said Miguel. “He’s a robot. That’s just how they programmed him.”

  “Sorry,” said Abia. “My bad.”

  “You are forgiven,” said the robot. “Please. Follow me.”

  The robot beeped a few times, twirled to the right, and rumbled down a sideways corridor between bookshelves.

  “Way to go, Miguel!” said Kyle. “This is actually going to work!”

  “Everything should be in that box on the top shelf!” said Miguel as the robot rose up on its extendable scissor-lift legs.

  The towering shelf was gigantic—maybe twenty-five feet tall.

  “Retrieving carton,” chirped the robot.

  Its folding supports opened in a crisscross X pattern that vertically elevated the box-grabbing apparatus closer to the ceiling.

  “This is so awesome,” said Miguel.

  But then the robot stuttered to a stop.

  It was five feet short of the shelf.

  “Maximum height limit has been achieved,” it peeped. “Contacting control center for alternate, taller, big-boy robotic research assistant.”

  “No!” said Kyle as loudly as he could while still whispering.

  “No!” Miguel said to the robot.

  The bot blinked. “Awaiting further instructions.”

  “Kyle?” said Abia. “Why won’t you let the robot summon assistance?”

  “Because if it contacts the control center, lights are going to start flashing upstairs. In the control room. On Mr. Raymo’s tablet computer. Maybe even in Mr. Lemoncello’s office.”

  “And the bad guys will know someone is down here in the basement!” said Miguel. “Good catch, Kyle.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So what are we going to do now?” said Abia, leaning back to examine the top shelf. She swung her flashlight across the crate.

  Squinting, Kyle could read the markings on the outside of the box. It was clearly the one they needed. But it was perched at the tippy-top of a metal shelving unit towering unsteadily over them.

  Kyle grabbed the nearest shelf. Gave it a short shove.

  The whole thing wobbled.

  “I am not able to climb up there to retrieve it,” reported Abia.

  “Me neither,” said Miguel. “I’m afraid of heights.”

  “I’m not,” said Kyle, dipping into the backpack again. This time, he pulled out Mr. Lemoncello’s drone slippers.

  “Do you know how to use those devices?” asked Abia.

  “Sure. They’re slippers. You slip them on your feet.”

  Kyle sat on the floor and yanked off his tennis shoes.

  “You could crash and injure yourself!” said Abia when Kyle stood up, his feet snug in the fuzzy slippers.

  “I’m not going to injure anything,” said Kyle. “I’m just going to float up there and grab a box.”

  He stomped on his heels.

  Nothing happened.

  He went up on tippy toe.

  Nothing.

  “Do like in The Wizard of Oz,” suggested Miguel.

  “Huh?”

  “All you have to do is knock the heels together three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go!”

  Kyle shrugged. It was worth a try.

  He clicked his heels together three times and said, “Up there. That, uh, shelf.”

  He felt a tingle in his toes and a tickle under the soles of his feet. As the drone propellers started spinning, there was a soft BRRRRR, like that of an electric toothbrush. Three seconds later, he rose off the floor.

  He was floating in front of the rickety shelving unit. It was a slow ascent but absolutely amazing. Pretty soon he was higher than the stalled robot. A minute later, he was level with the cardboard carton labeled “Family Frenzy: Diagrams, Mock-up, and Patent.”

  “Grab the box,” coached Miguel.

  Kyle leaned forward.

  “Whoa…”

  And nearly lost his balance.

  After flapping his arms to steady himself, he tried again.

  This time he grabbed the carton.

  “Dump it in that wire basket dealio on the robot!” cried Miguel.

  “Good idea,” said Kyle, still wobbly with the extra weight of the box in his arms. “Uh, any idea how I get down?”

  Miguel and Abia answered together: “Knock your heels together….”

  “Riiiight. Three times.” He clicked his heels again. “Take me down, please.”

  Kyle slowly drifted down and placed the cardboard container in the robot’s basket.

  “Uh, now take me all the way down to the floor,” Kyle said to his slippers after knocking the heels together three more times.

  “Lower box!” Miguel said to the robot.

  The robot did as instructed.

  Abia lifted the lid.

  “It is the patent and shoebox,” she declared. “Everything we need is in here. Mr. Lemoncello’s original mock-up with all the tokens he either whittled or borrowed from his librarian friend, Mrs. Gail Tobin. Here’s the Barbie doll go-go boot and the tiny harmonica and the cat charm from the librarian’s bracelet.”

  “Excellent,” said Kyle.

  “This is exactly what we need,” added Miguel. “Nothing stops a lie faster than cold hard facts.”

  “So let’s go dig up some more,” said Kyle.

  “You got it, bro.” Miguel turned to the robot. “Researchio? Go find me everything you can about the Benjamin Bean affair!”

  “Must be right near here,” said Kyle as the robot skidded sideways about two yards.

  “Makes sense,” said Abia. “We are dealing with the same time period, the early 1970s. Benjamin Bean stole Mr. Lemoncello’s whoopee-cushion-doodle idea for the Krinkle brothers right after Family Frenzy became his first surprise hit.”

  “The record you seek is on the third shelf,” said the robot.

  “Awesome,” said Kyle.

  The robot lengthened its forklift arms.

  Into an empty space.

  “There is nothing there,” said Abia.

  “The material you just requested has already been requested by another patron,” said the robot in an entirely different voice.

  “That sounds like the reference librarian,” said Abia. “Ms. Waintraub.”

  Researchio’s head rotated and one of his green LED headlamps flickered as it turned into a holographic projector. A shorter version of the research librarian, maybe two feet tall, appeared on the floor in front of Kyle, Abia, and Miguel.

  “What’s going on here?” Kyle demanded.

  Abia propped her hands on her hips and bent down as if she were scolding a garden gnome. “We need that other box! The one about Benjamin Bean. Quit being obstinate, Ms. Adrienne Waintraub!”

  “I’m sorry,” said the hologram in her matter-of-fact way. “As I stated previously, the material you requested has already been checked out by another patron. There are no other copies of the materials you seek anywhere in this library or, for that matter, the known universe. Kindly request it again at a later date.”

  “Oh, man,” said Miguel. “This is why I like real librarians. They’re search engines with a heart. This one’s just a machine!”

  “You forgot to mention how much more efficient I am,” replied the holo
gram.

  “Who took the box?” Kyle asked the holographic librarian.

  “I am not at liberty to divulge that information.”

  “When did they request it?” demanded Abia.

  “It is due back in twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes.”

  “There’s a one-day research limit on stack items,” said Miguel.

  “That means it was just checked out five minutes ago!” said Abia.

  “Correct,” said Ms. Waintraub with a very un-holographic wink.

  “The Krinkle brothers!”

  Miguel spun around and shone his flashlight up toward the ceiling, illuminating the tracks of the bin transport system.

  “This is a new contraption Mr. Raymo installed a couple weeks ago,” said Miguel. “The robots place the requested cartons into one of the big blue bins over there. A chain between the tracks hauls the bins up the wall. Then they shuttle along the rails like cars on a roller coaster, disappear through that hole, and eventually pop up right underneath the reference desk.”

  “There,” said Kyle, pointing his flashlight at a cardboard box slowly rising up the wall. It was tucked into a bright blue plastic bin, which was being towed by a thick chain set between two tubular tracks. There were empty blue bins crawling up the wall, every three feet, right behind it.

  It was so close.

  There was no way Kyle was going to let the Krinkle brothers get their hands on it before he did.

  “Hurry,” said Abia. “If we take the stairs, we might be able to intercept the carton the instant it appears underneath the reference desk.”

  “Wait,” said Kyle. “There’s a faster way. Those bins look big enough to sit in!”

  “True,” said Miguel. “Because some of the cartons down here are humongous.”

  Kyle dashed over to the wall in his drone slippers.

  “What are you doing now, Kyle Keeley?” cried Abia.

  “Going on a quick roller-coaster ride! Meet me upstairs, you guys, under the reference desk. Bring the shoebox. And my sneakers, too!”

  Kyle clicked his heels together three times.

  “Take me up to the blue bin right below that brown box!”

  He floated up the wall, swung around, and plopped his butt into a bin already climbing the incline.

  When the conveyor belt finished its ascent, the bin tilted backward. Kyle felt like an upside-down turtle in a blue plastic shell. He wiggled around and forced himself into a sitting position, his head barely missing the ceiling by about two inches.