The Creature in Room #YTH-125

by Mark Young

“Did you get the book?” Shelly asked.

  “It’s nice to see you too,” Higgy said jokingly.

  Newton took out the book and handed it to Shelly. She gave it to Theremin. “All right. Theremin, Start scanning!”

  “On it!” Theremin said, and he opened a door in his metal body and placed the book inside.

  “Um, what’s happening?” Newton asked.

  “While you were in London, we came up with a plan,” Shelly said. “Theremin’s going to scan the book and send it to everyone’s tablet. Then we can all read it at the same time and look for clues.”

  “Thanks,” Newton said. “I know it sounds weird, but I didn’t want to have to do this all on my own, you know?”

  “That doesn’t sound weird at all,” Shelly told him.

  “Scans ready!” Theremin said. “Check your tablets and get reading.”

  “Can I read the actual book?” Newton asked.

  Theremin opened the door on his chest. “Sure.”

  Newton took the book from Theremin, scrambled to his top bunk, and settled in to read. The story was about a scientist named Felicity Morningstar whose world was in danger. So she tried to create a superhuman by combining human DNA with animal DNA.

  “Animals have developed valuable survival mechanisms,” Felicity explained to the gathered scientists. “For example, Thaumoctopus mimicus can change its coloration and the shape of its body to mimic predators, thus protecting itself from them.”

  Newton’s mouth dropped open. He could do that too, and Shelly had guessed that it was the same as an octopus’s camouflaging ability.

  Felicity went on to describe many other “animal enhancements.” The ability to change color, like a chameleon. The grippy hands and feet, like a gecko. It all sounded very familiar.

  Newton put down the book and looked at his friends. Everyone was staring at him.

  “This book is describing me!” he said.

  “I know, dude,” Theremin said. “It’s weird.”

  “But I still don’t get it,” Newton said. “This is just a book. A story. Did somebody read it and actually make me? Or is this just a weird coincidence?”

  “Let’s keep reading,” Shelly urged.

  Newton read on, and the similarities kept coming. The enhanced human was created in a pod. He was born as a twelve-year-old human and then encoded with superior intelligence. Then his memory was wiped clean and a code word was embedded in his subconscious to awaken his intelligence. The code word was “brain gain.”

  Then the story started to differ from his. The scientist named the boy Ollie and raised him as her own. When a villain rose up and tried to destroy the world, Felicity triggered Ollie’s intelligence by saying “brain gain,” and he used his superpowers to save everyone.

  Newton closed the book. “I’m more confused than ever,” he said. “There’s a lot in this book that sounds like me. But there’s no school for mad scientists in it. Ollie lives in the regular world and thinks he’s a regular kid.”

  “Until he hears the words ‘brain gain,’ ” Odifin chimed in. “Just like when you hear the words ‘noodle noggin’!”

  As Odifin said the words, Newton’s brain felt like it was opening up.

  “Odifin, you have to be careful when you say those words!” Shelly reminded him.

  “It’s okay, Shelly,” Newton said. “Maybe it will help me figure out what this book really means.”

  Newton stared at the cover of the book. The Invincible Man by Zoumba Summit.

  Zoumba Summit. The letters started to dance and shift around in his mind.

  Bazoum Timmus…

  Tuzims Moumba…

  Musibo Tazmum…

  Mobius Mumtaz…

  “Mobius Mumtaz!” Newton cried. “If you rearrange the letters in the name ‘Zoumba Summit,’ they spell ‘Mobius Mumtaz’!”

  Shelly gasped. “Newton, if Ms. Mumtaz wrote this book—”

  She didn’t have time to finish her thought, because one of the headmistress’s fly drones zipped into the room.

  “Higgy Vollington and Newton Warp, report to Ms. Mumtaz’s office immediately!” the drone shouted loudly.

  CHAPTER 12 Time for the Truth

  Newton and Higgy left their friends and hurried over to the school building.

  “What do you think she wants?” Newton wondered as they walked to Mumtaz’s office.

  “Beats me,” Higgy said. “Unless it’s about our trip to London.”

  The boys stopped and looked at each other.

  “Do you think she knows about the Goo Guy incident?” Higgy asked.

  “Maybe,” Newton said. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it will be all right.”

  When they walked into Mumtaz’s office, the headmistress was reading a newspaper. She held it up, and there was a giant photo of Higgy handing the puppy to the teenage girl on the street in London. Newton was next to him.

  “ ‘Guy in Goo Guy Costume Rescues Puppy,’ ” she said, reading the headline out loud. “Looks like you boys made the front page.”

  “We can explain,” Higgy said. “This puppy fell down a hole, and I had to rescue it. So I took off my clothes so that I could move more easily, and—”

  “And we told everybody he was wearing a Goo Guy costume, and they believed it,” Newton piped up, trying to help. “They even say it in the headline.”

  “I understand that your heart was in the right place, Higgy, but your behavior put yourself and Franken-Sci High at risk,” Ms. Mumtaz said. “The faculty is considering expelling you.”

  “You can’t do that!” Newton blurted out. “That’s not fair!”

  “It’s okay, Newton,” Higgy said sadly. “The fact that I’ve been able to stick it out here for this long is a miracle anyway.”

  Newton shook his head. “No, you can’t do this!” he said. He slapped the book down onto the headmistress’s desk. “This only happened because Higgy brought me to London to get this book. I recognized the pod in the story from my buried memories from before I woke up in the Brain Bank that day. And today I realized something else. The author, Zoumba Summit, is you, Ms. Mumtaz! You are Zoumba Summit, aren’t you?”

  The headmistress froze. Then she blinked.

  “Higgy, please leave Newton and me alone right now,” she said.

  Higgy looked at Newton. “Are you going to be okay?”

  Newton wasn’t sure. But at least Mumtaz hadn’t told him to leave too. He thought that seemed like a promising sign.

  “I’ll be fine,” Newton said, and Higgy reluctantly left the office.

  Ms. Mumtaz pressed a button on her desk.

  “It’s time,” she said.

  “Time for what?” Newton asked.

  “Time to tell you the truth, Newton,” Ms. Mumtaz said. “You are right. I am Zoumba Summit. In my younger days I wrote science fiction for fun. I didn’t care if I sold books, and I found a small company who wanted to publish them. I used an assumed name because, at the time, fictional pursuits were frowned on in the mad-scientist community. But I went ahead with it anyway, and the ideas in The Invincible Man led to the creation of my greatest work, Newton.”

  Newton felt a chill run through his body. “What do you mean?”

  Mumtaz didn’t answer, and at that moment professors started to file into the room. Professor Flubitus entered first, his green hair standing on end. Professor Leviathan ducked to get through the doorway. Professor Phlegm wore his usual frown, and Professor Wagg wore his usual colorful suspenders and bow tie. Professor Juvinall entered holding a teddy bear, and Professor Wells came in shouting “Grab the monster by the tail!” out of the right side of his mouth as he instructed students in the other dimension that he lived in. Soon, all of the professors Newton knew were there.

  “Does this have to happen now, Mobius?” Professor Juvinall asked. “It’s teddy bear teatime!”

  Ms. Mumtaz nodded toward Newton. “He knows too much already,” she said. “I think we need to tell him the truth.”<
br />
  Newton felt like he couldn’t breathe. Was he finally going to find out where he’d come from? And why were so many professors gathered here?

  “Telling him could alter the future, Mobius,” Professor Phlegm warned.

  Professor Flubitus spoke up. “He’s a smart young man, and he’s not going to stop until he gets the answers he wants. If we tell him, we can retain control of the situation.”

  Nobody else objected.

  “Fine,” Mumtaz said. “This is the truth, Newton. You already know that you play a significant role in the future of the school. What you do not know is that you were expressly created for that future.”

  Newton took this in. “Created… like the character in your book.”

  “Exactly,” Ms. Mumtaz replied. “Everyone in this room had a hand in creating you. We pooled our talents and skills to combine the components of the best human DNA with DNA from animals with remarkable abilities so that you would have some of their amazing aptitudes.”

  “Why would you need a human with special abilities?” Newton asked.

  “In the future, Franken-Sci High is in terrible, terrible danger,” Professor Flubitus said. “So we got together and created you to save it, Newton. But for our plan to work, we knew we had to send you back here, to the past.”

  A bunch of emotions flowed through Newton. This was the truth. The truth he wanted to hear. But it didn’t make him happy. There was no mom and dad in this story. No family to return to. And there was something else that was even worse…

  “So you just made me because you needed me to do something?” Newton asked.

  “I know that sounds harsh, Newton, but we gave you life,” Ms. Mumtaz said. “We wiped your memories of your creation, or at least we thought we did, so that you could live a normal life with other children. A happy life, we hope.”

  “In the future we never imagined that you would be so curious about where you came from,” Professor Flubitus said.

  “We should have imagined it,” Professor Leviathan said. “But our future selves must have forgotten what it’s really like to be human.”

  More questions swirled in Newton’s mind, and he wasn’t sure which one to ask first.

  “How am I supposed to save the school?” Newton asked.

  “That is something we still can’t tell you,” Professor Flubitus answered. “It would endanger the future too much. But you finally know where you came from, my boy. We owe you that, at least.”

  “What happens after I save the school?” Newton asked, his eyes filling with tears. “Will the experiment end?”

  “Of course not, Newton,” Professor Leviathan answered.

  “And what about Odifin?” Newton asked. “If he’s my half brother, then was he part of the experiment too? Or did our DNA just come from the same place? How does he fit in?”

  Ms. Mumtaz and Professor Flubitus looked at each other.

  “I think we’ve told you all we can,” Mumtaz replied. “And, Newton, you mustn’t share this knowledge with your friends. It could jeopardize everything we’ve worked for.”

  “Why can’t you just tell me everything?” Newton’s voice was rising. “This isn’t right. It isn’t fair. And I should be able to tell my friends!”

  “Perhaps we should sedate him now,” Professor Snollygoster suggested.

  “Or another memory wipe,” said Professor Phlegm.

  “NO! Leave me alone!” Newton yelled, and he raced out of Ms. Mumtaz’s office.

  He didn’t know where to go, but he knew one thing. He wanted to see his friends, and he wasn’t sure he could keep this inside.

  As Newton left the office, a tiny eyeball on feet followed him. The eyeball walked down the linoleum hallway, out the door, and through the jungle path to the girls’ dorm. It entered the door, hopped up a flight of stairs, and entered a room with the door cracked open.

  Mimi picked up the eyeball. “There you are,” she said, and she plugged the eyeball’s feet into a port on her tablet. “All right. Let’s see what Newton Warp has been up to!”

  More from this Series

  The Good, the Bad, and…

  Book 6

  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

  Keep reading for a preview of

  The Good, the Bad, and the Accidentally Evil!

  by

  Mark Young

  Newton Warp stared up at the tall, brick dormitory surrounded by palm trees and colorful tropical flowers. It was a typical day on the island—sunny, hot, and humid—but Newton didn’t mind. He’d always liked hot weather, but now he suspected it was due to his lizard-DNA.

  Newton had been staring at the building for fifteen minutes, afraid to go in. Because when he went in, he knew he’d have to either tell a big truth or a big lie to his best friends, and either way, it was going to be bad.

  A fly landed on his nose, and his tongue instinctively lashed out. He almost pulled it into his mouth when he realized what he was doing, and he flicked it away.

  They did this to me, he thought. I’m a monster, created in a lab, to do a job. I’m not human, like them.

  He gazed around the courtyard, at the other students at Franken-Sci High. Boris Bacon was bouncing across the lawn in his anti-gravity boots. Rosalind Wu was circling the courtyard in a jet pack. And Tootie van der Flootin was walking a fluffy yellow monster with three eyeballs on a leash.

  How nice it must be, to be a normal human. To know not just who you are but what you are. To only be worried about what’s for lunch in the cafeteria and whether you’ll pass your next teleportation test.

  Newton had never known that feeling of being normal. The first feeling he could remember was being confused and a little scared, when he had appeared in the library of the school for mad scientists with no memories of where he came from and a strange bar code on his foot. Luckily, Shelly and Theremin were the ones who found him, and the animal-loving girl and her robot buddy had become his good friends.

  He’d met more friends, too, like his roommate, Higgy, who was made of green goo. And Odifin, a talking brain in a jar, and his assistant, Rotwang. And lots of other kids were nice to him, even Mimi Crowninshield, who was usually mean to other people. In most cases, having friends would be enough to make somebody feel like everyone else. But not Newton.

  Newton’s first friends, Shelly and Theremin, had quickly realized there was something different about him. He had abilities that normal humans didn’t have. He could blend into the background when he was afraid, sprout gills that let him breathe underwater, and change his appearance to mimic others—and those were just some of the special things he could do. Newton had uncovered memories of being born in a pod, with scientists gathered around him. Did that have something to do with his weird talents?

  Shelly and Theremin, along with Higgy, had promised to help Newton figure out where he’d come from, who his family was, and why he was different.

  After some digging, smart thinking, and sneaking around, they’d learned a few things. Time-traveling Professor Flubitus had admitted that Newton and Shelly played an important role in the school’s future. And Flubitus had also delivered the news that Odifin and Newton shared some significant DNA, basically making them half-brothers.

  Then, today, Newton and his friends had made the biggest discovery of all. They’d found a science fiction book called The Invincible Man about a scientist who spliced human and animal DNA to create an indestructible, human-looking creature in a pod. The character in the book sounded just like Newton! But that wasn’t the most mind-blowing part. The author’s name was Zoumba Summit, and Newton had figured out that when you scrambled the letters, they spelled Mobius Mumtaz—the name of the Headmistress of Franken-Sci High.

  Armed with that information, Newton had confronted Ms. Mumta
z, Professor Flubitus, and the other professors in the school. And he’d learned some truths. Yes, Mumtaz had written the book. And years in the future, the book had inspired her to create Newton in a lab. The professors had worked to gather to splice animal DNA and human DNA and made Newton in a pod so he could save the school. Then they’d wiped his memory of being created and dumped him in the past, in the library.

  Not a real human. No real family, Newton, thought, still staring up at the dorm.

  And after dropping that bombshell, Mumtaz had refused to say anymore. She couldn’t tell Newton how he would save the school because that could change the outcome of the future.

  “And Newton, you mustn’t share this knowledge with your friends. It could jeopardize everything we’ve worked for,” Mumtaz had added.

  Now, Newton didn’t care one lick about what those professors had worked for. He had been fully prepared to tell his friends everything. But then Professor Phlegm, with his shiny bald head and sinister eye patch, had thrown out a threat: A memory wipe.

  The more Newton thought about it, the more his part-reptilian blood went cold. The professors had wiped his memory before dumping him in the library, and he’d made a lot of memories since then—good ones as well as bad ones. Was Phlegm threatening to take away all of his memories? Without them, he’d lose his friends. And what if they wiped his friends’ memories too? Or kept them away from each other, so they couldn’t become friends again? The worried thoughts swirled through his mind.

  Newton sighed. He knew what he had to do, and it wasn’t going to feel good. He walked across the courtyard and into the dorm. He stepped into the glass transport tube and said, “Freshman Floor.”

  Whoosh! The tube shot up four floors and then opened up. He stepped out and made his way to the door marked YTH-125. He paused a moment before opening the door. Then he took a deep breath and entered.

  “Newton!” Shelly, with her wild curly hair, leaped off a chair and pounced on him in a hug. “Higgy said that Mumtaz called you to her office because of what happened in London, and then she kicked out Higgy as soon as you mentioned Zoumba Summit. What did she tell you?”