by Mark Young
“Well done, my boy. Well done!” he cried.
“It was your idea to bring me here,” young Newton said. “I’m just glad it worked out.”
“I suppose I’ll have to un-evacuate everyone,” future Ms. Mumtaz said with a sigh. But then she smiled. “Nice work, Newton.”
Newton and Flubitus walked through the empty halls of the school back to the time hoop. The professor activated it, and they both stepped through.
Newton blinked as the green flow faded. Then he heard a voice.
“Aha! I knew there was something up with this machine!”
CHAPTER 15 The Future Is So Bright, You Gotta Wear Diode Laser Goggles
Theremin, Shelly, Higgy, and Mimi were all in the supply closet.
“It’s a time machine!” Theremin continued. “I heard Flubitus say you were going into the future! So I told Shelly and Higgy, and they came and we waited for you.”
“And of course I was spying, so I followed them in,” Mimi said matter-of-factly.
Newton and Flubitus looked at each other.
“We can’t lie,” Newton said.
“But we have to be careful,” Flubitus added. He turned to the four other students. “Let’s all go to Ms. Mumtaz’s office and discuss this calmly.”
They quickly made their way to the office, where the headmistress was eagerly waiting. She raised an eyebrow at the sight of Newton’s friends.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“Young Theremin is a very intrepid investigative reporter,” Flubitus answered. “I’m afraid they know of our travels.”
“What happened?” Mumtaz asked. “If Newton is back, that means…”
“The school is safe in the future,” Flubitus finished.
Mumtaz let out a breath. “Wonderful,” she said. She looked at Newton and his friends. “Now, you saved the school, and we’re so very grateful, but I must ask that you try to carry on as usual and focus on being students again.”
Newton had been thinking about what he would say at this very moment. His noodle noggin had been helpful. But also he felt more confident. He’d faced monsters. He’d rescued his future self. He’d saved the school.
I can do this, he thought.
“A few things need to change,” Newton said. “For one thing, Ms. Mumtaz, you have to let Shelly keep rescuing animals and monsters. And bring Peewee back. If it wasn’t for him, we would have lost the school.”
“Wow, really?” Shelly asked.
“But—” Mumtaz began.
“There are enough geniuses at this school to help figure out how to keep all the animals from escaping,” Newton said. He looked into her eyes. “Trust me. It will make the future a whole lot better.”
Mumtaz nodded. “Consider it done.”
Newton turned to Shelly. “You have to stay,” he said.
“I will, if I can run the rescue lab,” she replied.
“And there’s one more thing,” he said. “I have an idea about how to make the world better for monsters, too. But you’ll have to work with Mimi.”
Shelly glanced at Mimi. “If it will make the world better for monsters, I’ll do it.”
Mimi frowned. “Hmm…”
“Come on, Mimi,” Newton urged. “Do it for the future.”
Mimi nodded. “I’ll give it a try, Newton,” she said.
Flubitus clapped his hands. “Splendid!” he cried. “I feel we are looking at a very bright future indeed. How does that song go? The future’s so bright, you must wear…”
“Diode laser goggles?” Theremin suggested.
“That’s it!” Flubitus cried.
* * *
“Okay, Newton. Turn left. Now smile. Don’t hunch your shoulders so much.… Hold it. Click!”
Newton posed in front of the wall in the newspaper lab as Theremin tried to take his photo.
“I like it a lot better when I’m working the camera,” Newton protested.
“Just a few more,” Theremin said. “After all, you’re the star of my new front-page article, ‘The Boy Who Saved the School.’ ”
Higgy came over. “Tell me again about what we’re like in the future? Am I really a professor?”
Newton nodded. “Yes, but like I told you, that’s a whole other time line. Things could be different in the future for all of us.” He glanced over at Shelly. “But I hope, different in a good way.”
Shelly and Mimi were sitting at a computer terminal together, working on Newton’s idea.
“Your family really knows how to find monsters in the wild?” Mimi was asking.
Shelly nodded. “It’s our main specialty. And if Crowninshield Industries builds a monster rescue center on the island, we can bring all the stray monsters we find here.”
“And then we can test them, to see what powers they have,” Mimi went on. “Just like you did with Newton?”
“Right!” Shelly said, smiling. “But only if the monsters agree to it.”
It’s good to see Shelly so happy! Newton thought. His noodle noggin couldn’t tell him if the seeds he’d planted in the present would mean a better future for Shelly, but something in his gut told him they were all on the right track.
Professor Flubitus walked into the newspaper lab. Today his wild green hair was tamed by the strange bowler hat he often wore, topped with an assortment of unusual gadgets.
“Hello, students,” he greeted them. “I just came to—whoa!”
Peewee teleported into the room, and Professor Flubitus tripped, trying to avoid him. The bowler hat flew off his head and landed on a lab table. A gadget on the hat began to project a huge digital image into the air.
“It’s a newspaper!” Theremin cried. “The Mad Science Monitor.”
“And look!” Mimi cried, pointing. “The date is twenty-five years from now.”
“Oh dear,” Flubitus said, sitting up on the floor. “I brought this back with me from my latest travels and—”
Peewee jumped onto his shoulder. Flubitus laughed. “Oh my, that tickles!”
While Peewee kept the professor busy, the friends scanned through the issue.
“No way! I’m the editor in chief!” Theremin cried.
“Well,” Mimi said, pointing to an article, “I’m head of Crowninshield Industries in the future, just like Newton said.”
There was a photo of Higgy, his wife, and his son at the Franken-Sci High Annual Parabola Picnic.
“My future family!” Higgy gasped.
Newton read the photo credit, “ ‘Photo by Newton Warp-Ravenholt,’ ” he said. “But ‘Ravenholt’ is Shelly’s…”
Shelly blushed. “There’s a feature article on the monster rescue center here, run by Shelly Ravenholt-Warp.”
“Oh,” Newton said, and he blushed too.
“I don’t get it,” Theremin said.
“Duh, it means they get married in the future,” Mimi said.
Flubitus jumped to his feet. “Enough, enough!” he said, and he grabbed the hat, turned off the projector, and put the hat back on his head. “Carry on!”
The friends all looked at one another for a minute, not sure what to say.
“I think we should stop worrying about the future from now on,” Shelly said.
“Yes,” Newton agreed. “Let’s just have fun getting there.”
Pfffffffffft! Higgy made a farting noise with his feet.
“Ew!” Mimi wailed.
“Just getting us started,” Higgy said, and everyone laughed. “Living in the present, you know?”
Newton looked around at his happy friends, and for the first time, he knew in his head, and his heart, and in every cell of his weird DNA, that things were going to be all right.
Guess I’d better get some diode laser goggles! he thought.
Epilogue
During the first week of sophomore year, Newton, Shelly, and Theremin met in the library Brain Bank.
“Leave it to Wagg to give us an assignment on the first day of school,” Theremin compl
ained.
“At least he’s letting us work in teams,” Shelly said. “Come on. Let’s plug in.”
Newton plugged one end of a cord into his tablet, and the other end into a port on a tank of one of the brains—Sir Isaac Newton.
“Hello, Sir Isaac,” Newton began.
The brain’s eyestalks moved so that the eyeballs focused on Theremin. “You!” he cried. “You’re the creature who knocked me out of my jar last year! You were almost the end of me!”
“It was an ACCIDENT!” Theremin yelled.
Newton and Shelly looked at each other and shook their heads. This wasn’t going to be easy.…
In the aisle of brains behind them, a light flashed, but Newton, Shelly, and Theremin didn’t see it. A boy appeared out of thin air.
The boy was tall and thin, with green eyes. His black hair had a white streak down the middle. He wore a blue shirt, jeans, and sneakers. And he was barefoot. On the bottom of his left foot was a bar code that ended in the number seventeen.
The boy peeked through the brains on the shelf and spied Newton, Shelly, and Theremin on the other side. A slow grin spread across his face. A grin that most people would have called an evil grin if they’d seen it.
It worked! Newton Seventeen thought.…
More from this Series
What's the Matter with…
Book 1
Monsters Among Us!
Book 2
The Robot Who Knew Too…
Book 3
Beware of the Giant…
Book 4
The Creature in Room…
Book 5
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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