by Jon Scieszka
“September 28,” she said.
“And that 95 doesn’t stand for 1995 does it?”
Director Green laughed. “Only in this room. Your job is to play the way children from the 1990s might have played. Down the hall it’s 2025. Then we have the 2045 room, the Swinging 2060s, and the 2075 room. For everyone else out there, it’s 2095 all year long.”
Fred, Sam, and I looked at each other.
We were a hundred years in the future, standing in a museum exhibit of a hundred years past.
“So we’re supposed to be dummies from 1995?” said Fred.
“That shouldn’t be too hard for some people I know,” said Sam.
Director Green handed me a book from the shelf. “Why don’t you pretend you are scanning this. It’s called a book. You’ve probably seen vids of people using these in the old days. Can you imagine? People used to scan the output and project stories on their own.”
I looked at the book. “Green Eggs and Ham! That was my favorite when I was a kid.”
Director Green handed Fred a remote. “And this controls the vid display. This early system was called television. No one had even thought of brain stim. Images could only be beamed to this large box. Children used to sit in front of it and file data via visual interface.”
Fred took the remote and stretched out on the couch. “I’m not sure what you said, but I definitely know how to watch cartoons. This is the one where Bugs and Daffy fight over rabbit season and duck season. Watch this. Daffy’s going to blow his own beak to the top of his head.”
Director Green gave us a funny look. “It’s wonderful that you boys know so much about the 1990s. I’ll be sure to mention it to your agency.” She looked around the room for something for Sam. “This would be perfect for you. It’s called a pencil. You could pretend to be looking through your old-fashioned spectacles and outputting text and picture files by hand.”
“You want me to doodle?” asked Sam.
“Oh, that’s a perfect old slang word, too,” said Director Green. “You could fool anyone into thinking they were watching three boys from the 1990s at play.”
Fred, Sam, and I tried not to laugh.
“All set then,” said Director Green. “The Museum of Natural History People of the Past exhibit is now officially open.” She pressed a wavy red sign on the wall control panel. The wall nearest the hall disappeared, but the pictures on it stayed right where they were. “I’ve turned on the InvisiWall. No one can get in. Use your code numbers to get out.”
She tapped a string of numbers on the control panel. A door appeared in the invisible wall and she turned to leave. But when she opened the door, our real troubles began.
Three guys in funny-looking blue jeans and fake-looking T-shirts walked into the room. “Sorry we’re late. The agency sent us for the 1990s exhibit,” said the kid in front.
“But that can’t be,” said Director Green. “You’re already here.”
The second kid handed a disk to Director Green. She popped it into a slot in the control panel. She looked at us, then the three kids, then us, then the three kids again.
“That is the agency contract. But if you are you, who—” she turned to us—“are they?”
FOUR
“Who are we?” repeated Sam. “Uh, we are—”
Fred stepped in front of Sam. “I’ll tell you who we are. We are ... magicians.”
Director Green looked puzzled.
The three guys cheered. “Magic!”
Fred put his arm around my shoulder. “Joe, the Magnificent, will show you an amazing trick.”
I gave Fred my best evil eye, then tried to think of a quick trick. I took the pencil from Sam.
“Have you ever seen anything float in midair with no support?” I said.
“Of course we have,” said the lead guy. “You think we’ve never seen an anti-gravity disk?”
I had a sudden feeling it was going to be tough to impress kids a hundred years in the future.
“Make it disappear,” said the second.
“Blow it up!” said the third.
“I can do better than that,” I said. “I’ll turn it to rubber right before your very eyes.” I banged the pencil on the table. “Solid, right?”
Director Green jumped. “Careful, please. There aren’t many of those antiques left.”
“I say the magic words three times—Banana bones, banana bones, banana bones.” I held the pencil horizontal at eye level and wiggled it up and down. “Presto, it’s rubber!”
My audience looked completely unimpressed.
“I can also stick the pencil through my head.” I put the eraser end of the pencil in my left ear and pushed my right cheek out with my tongue. I pulled the pencil down and moved my tongue up. Pencil up, tongue down. Pencil down, tongue up.
“Can you shoot fire out of your fingers?” asked one of the kids.
“Maybe I should just run a quick check on you boys,” said Director Green, looking a little nervous. I had visions of the SellBot returning.
“Wait,” said Fred. “First let me show you this one magic knot trick. Stand in a circle and put your right hands together.” Director Green and the three guys obeyed Fred’s command. “Now close your eyes while I tie the magic knot.” Fred tied their hands together and motioned us toward the door in the InvisiWall. “Count backward with me. When we reach zero, the magic knot will disappear. 60, 59, 58, 57...”
Director Green and the three guys joined in. “56, 55, 54, 53. . .”
Fred, Sam, and I backed slowly out the door counting. “52, 51, 50 . . .” We found ourselves in the middle of a large room.
“I didn’t know you knew magic,” I said.
“I don‘t,” said Fred. “Let’s get out of here.” He ran toward a stairway, then bounced back.
“Watch out for those InvisiWalls,” said Sam.
I looked around for a way to escape. “I think I know where we are. This used to be where they had the African mammals. If we go down those stairs and past the North American mammals, that should put us right in the main lobby.”
We could hear Director Green and the three guys still counting. “39, 38, 37...”
We took off running. We ran past giraffes, gorillas, and a herd of elephants. We jumped down a flight of steps, turned the corner, and ran straight into the SellBot.
“Hey buddy, what’s your number?”
“Oh no. Not Hoover Head again,” said Fred.
“Maybe we can overload his circuits with a giant number,” said Sam.
The SellBot stuck out its number pad. Sam punched 384,621 x 489,792. The SellBot didn’t pause. “188,384,288,832. Wrong number.”
We heard the noise of people calling upstairs.
“So much for my magic knot,” said Fred.
“Hey buddy, what’s your number?”
“Okay, try these,” said Sam. “Joe’s number is 100 divided by 3. Fred’s number is the square root of 2. And my number is pi. Calculate those, dust sucker.”
The SellBot whirred and hummed. Its lights blinked. The noise upstairs got louder and closer. The SellBot made a weird pinging noise and started bumping into the wall saying, “33.333333333333 ... ping . . . 1.41421356 ... ping . . . 3.14159265358979323 . . . ping. . . .”
“What did you do to it?” asked Fred.
“None of those numbers end.” Sam smiled. “All three go on forever.”
The crazed robot hummed and pinged and crashed its head into the wall. Smoke leaked out of its side. The SellBot crashed to the ground.
That’s when we heard a voice call from the top of the stairs, “There they are!”
FIVE
We jumped over the twitching SellBot and ran down a flight of stairs. We had almost made it to the lobby, when the sound of a buzzer filled the halls.
The museum doors opened. A tidal wave of people came flooding in, and we were right in its path.
We dodged the first bunch of teenagers. They had corkscrew, spike, and Mohawk hair in
every color you can think of. But the most amazing thing was that no one was touching the ground.
“They’re flying. People in the future have figured out how to fly,” said Sam.
A solid river of people flowed past us. An old man in an aluminum suit. A woman with leopard-patterned skin. A class in shiny school uniforms. Everyone was floating about a foot above the floor.
“How do they do that?” I said.
“Look closely,” said Sam. “Everyone has a small disk with a green triangle and a red square.”
“Hey, you’re right,” I said.
“I’m always right,” said Sam. “That is obviously the anti-gravity disk that kid was talking about. Now let’s get out of here before another SellBot tracks us down.”
Fred grabbed my belt. Sam grabbed Fred’s belt. And we fought our way outside. We stopped at the statue of Teddy Roosevelt sitting on his horse looking out over Central Park. We stood and looked out with him.
“Wow,” said Fred. “I see it but I don’t believe it.”
The sidewalk was full of floating people of every shape and color. There were people with green skin, blue skin, purple skin, orange, striped, plaid, dotted, and you-name-it skin. The street was packed three high and three deep with floating bullet-shaped things that must have been anti-gravity cars. And all around the trees of Central Park, towering buildings spread up and out like gigantic mechanical trees taller than the clouds. Layers and layers of anti-gravity cars and lines of people snaked around a hundred stories above us. New York was bigger, busier, and noisier than ever.
“Okay. I think I’ve seen enough of New York 2095,” said Sam. “Let’s hit 1995 on the magic square and head out before the killer robots show up again.” Sam sat down under Teddy’s horse, drew the magic square, and tapped 1995.
Nothing happened.
Fred and Sam looked at me.
“Wow. Look at that building,” I said.
“Hey, Mr. Book Expert,” said Sam. “Our foolproof magic square seems to be fooling us.”
“Yeah,” said Fred. “You said all we have to do is tap the year we want to go to.”
I cleared my throat. “We have to use the magic square in The Book,” I said as fast as I could.
Sam looked stunned. “Tell me you’re kidding.” He looked at me again. “You’re not kidding. This is so incredibly stupid. Even the dumbest subhumans in Demons and Dragons don’t make the same mistake five times in a row. Who could be such a knucklehead?”
Fred and Sam looked at me.
“Such a chump,” said Fred.
“Such a nitwit,” said Sam.
“Dolt.”
“Dunce.”
“Okay! Okay! I get the idea,” I said. “The Book will turn up. It’s always somewhere.”
“I’m not going back in that museum,” said Sam. He took one step down from the statue. And then out of nowhere, the scariest-looking robot I have ever seen or even imagined appeared in front of us. It was ten feet tall, covered with weapons, and laughing an evil, metal laugh. It made the SellBot look like a toaster.
Sam jumped behind Teddy Roosevelt’s horse.
“You cannot run. You cannot hide. Slayer 3000,” boomed the monster robot. “Now playing in brain stim theaters everywhere.”
The Slayer 3000 disappeared and a five-foot-tall slice of pizza appeared in its place.
“Eat Ray’s Pizza Now!” said the slice. Then it disappeared too.
I looked down the sidewalk and saw robots, pizza, beer bottles, miniature faces, and 101 different ads popping on and off above the floating crowd. No one seemed to pay any attention.
“Wow,” I said. “3-D advertising.”
“I knew that,” said Sam.
Sam looked over my shoulder and suddenly froze. “Act natural. Keep talking. This is just how it happens in the time-travel movies. Just when you think the good guys are safe, they get attacked by the most unlikely bad guys.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “That Slayer 3000 was just a movie ad.”
“I know,” said Sam. “But those three girls over there are for real. They’ve been watching us and checking a piece of paper. They’re probably time police in disguise.”
“What are you talking about?” said Fred.
“Those girls,” said Sam. “I’ll bet they’re time travel police, working with the SellBots.”
Just then, Director Green came out of the museum entrance. The SellBot was right behind her.
“You three boys—come here.”
Sam and Fred and I thought about it for just one second. Then we took off down Central Park West, headed for Seventy-seventh Street.
SIX
“Run for your life,” yelled Sam. “Next the killer girls will be saying they only want to help us.”
We dodged another class trip in silver pajamas.
“Wait. We only want to help you,” yelled one of the girls.
That was all we needed to hear. We ran twice as fast. Fred took the lead. We turned right on Seventy-seventh Street, crossed Columbus Avenue, and headed for Broadway.
“Watch where you’re going!”
“Get off the flyway!”
“Buy a disk!”
“Eat Ray’s Pizza Now!”
Everything and everybody yelled at us as we bounced off floating ads and low-flying people.
I looked back over one shoulder. The killer girls were only a block behind us, flying along effortlessly with their anti-gravity disks.
“We’ll never outrun them on the ground,” I panted.
“We’re doomed,” said Sam.
“Not yet we’re not,” said Fred. He pointed to a tiny shop squeezed in between ads for Jono! Breath Freshener and Dr. Lane’s Deodorant Pills.
His sign said “Ray’s Original Pizza and Stuff.”
“We’re about to die and you want a slice of pizza?” asked Sam.
Fred walked up to the shop. “I’ll have a slice and three anti-gravity disks.”
A little green man put a slice and three anti-gravity disks on the counter.
“We’re saved,” said Sam.
I looked back at the girls. I know this sounds strange, but the one in the lead wearing a baseball cap looked like Fred with a ponytail.
“That’ll be $153,” said the man. “One dollar for each AG patch. One hundred and fifty for the slice.”
We dug in our pockets and came up with my one measly quarter. “We’re doomed,” said Sam.
I held the quarter in front of me between my thumbs and forefingers. “Have you ever seen a human bend metal?” I asked, hoping he might give us the disks for a trick.
The old man picked up the disks. “You ever seen a pizza guy call the cops?”
I looked back. The girls were getting closer. I got a good look at the second one, and I’m telling you—it gave me the chills. She looked like a girl version of Sam without the glasses. We had to do something to get those disks. Quick.
And that’s exactly what Sam did.
“I’ll just put that on my number,” said Sam. The pizza guy gave Sam a nasty look.
“Why dintcha say that in the first place?” He slid Sam a number pad. Sam typed 852-159-654-753. He scooped up our disks and we ran.
“What about your slice?” called the pizza man.
We stopped at the corner of Broadway and Seventy-seventh. Stacks of car pods swooshed downtown. Lines of people snaked above us. We smelled a nasty odor. We were standing ankle deep in trash that everyone else floated over.
“What was that number you punched?” I asked.
“That’s the museum number,” said Sam. “It was a cinch to remember. It’s four combinations on the magic square: 8+5+2, 1+5+9, 6+5+4, and 7+5+3.”
“Oh yeah. That’s a cinch,” said Fred.
“Disks on,” said Sam. We each slapped a patch on our T-shirt. “Activate green triangle now.” We punched our green triangles and popped up into the flow of people-traffic above us.
“Check it out,” said Fre
d. “To steer these things, you just look in the direction you want to go.”
“Eyeball control,” said Sam. “Amazing.”
Traffic stopped. We floated across the street with everyone else. Over the incredible din of car pods, bus pods, talking ads, and talking people I heard someone yell, “Joe!”
I turned and saw the third girl waving. My blood froze. It was scary enough that she knew my name, but scarier still that she looked just like my sister.
“Fast forward,” I yelled.
Now I know Fred had never even seen one of these anti-gravity things before, but he sailed down the flyway like he had used an anti-gravity disk every day of his life. Sam and I followed. We surfed through crowds of people streaming out of the giant buildings. We zigzagged around jungles of singing, talking 3-D ads. But every time we looked back, the girls were still there.
“We can’t shake them,” said Sam. “It’s like they know where we’re going.”
“Time to pull some stunts,” said Fred.
We hit some open space down near Sixty-eighth Street, and Fred found exactly what he was looking for. A crowd of people blocked the flyway. Behind them was a talking giant 3-D toilet paper roll. If you were a maniac, you might think it was a ramp to jump over the crowd.
“Time to catch some air,” yelled Fred the maniac.
Killer girls behind us. Solid crowd in front of us. We had no choice but to follow Fred in the only direction left. Up.
“Squishy Soft is oh, so smooth,” said the toilet paper roll.
We flew down the toilet paper, up the roll, and into midair over the crowd. And we probably would have landed just as smoothly, but we ran into a little problem. A squishy-soft problem. Right where Fred was planning to land, there was another talking roll of Squishy Soft.
We hit the second roll, one, two, three, bounced high in the air, then fell to the ground hopelessly tangled in “Oh, so smooth” Squishy Soft.
SEVEN
I heard the crowd, felt someone unwrap us, heard Sam moan, “I’m too young to die.”
