“Is there something I can help you with?” she snapped. She drummed her fingers impatiently on the top of the laptop. “As you can see, I’m very busy, er … networking all the new library computers.”
Being a secret agent, I’m used to dealing with strange characters. I was sure Ms. Rogue was doing more than just linking a few laptops. But I couldn’t let her know I was on to her. I uttered the first thing that came into my head.
“Suzy Spy!” I said.
“Excuse me?” said the librarian.
“The new Suzy Spy book,” I explained. “Ms. Young said she’d put it aside for me.”
“Oh, I’m afraid that one has already been checked out,” said Ms. Rogue. “A delightful young girl took it this morning. She said she already has the whole collection at home but didn’t want to crease their spines….”
Suddenly, the library doors swung open and Trudy Hart entered. Her face was buried in Peril in Paris! I should have known my arch nemesis had nabbed the book, but the word “delightful” had thrown me. Trudy knows how much I love the Suzy Spy books. I was fully expecting her to gloat about getting the new one first.
As Trudy walked past, she paused for a moment and frowned as though she didn’t know who I was. Then she smiled pleasantly and sat at one of the new computers. The Trudy Hart I know never passes up an opportunity to gloat. Something seriously strange was going on….
“Would you like to read this one instead?” the librarian said suddenly, holding up a book called Poochie Power!
She was wearing a smile that looked very uncomfortable on her face. “It’s about a doggie with magical powers. It’s very funny.”
“No thanks, I think I’ll look for something else,” I said, strolling away and heading for the bookshelves behind Trudy Hart. I pretended to browse the books until the librarian reopened her laptop and resumed her frantic typing. Then I peered over Trudy’s shoulder.
Trudy had placed the book beside her and was tapping away on the keyboard along with all the other kids. Her fingers were a blur of manic movement! But when I looked at the screen, I saw that she was typing gobbledygook!
Then I glanced at the Suzy Spy book. Instead of the usual opening chapter that always begins with the words “Hi! My name is Suzy Spy…,” the page was also filled with gobbledygook!
Even glancing at the page made me feel a bit odd, which meant the gobbledygook obviously wasn’t gobbledygook at all. What looked like nonsense to me was probably responsible for turning Trudy into a human robot. (That was actually a bit of an improvement!)
A quick squint at the other kids’ books confirmed that their pages had also been swapped for the mysterious language. The kids were typing the exact same thing on their laptops, fingers jabbing at the keys like little pistons.
Then I suddenly realized where I had seen this kind of writing before!
It was a few weeks before in tech class. My computer had crashed, and loads of random letters and numbers and symbols had appeared on the screen. I’d asked the tech teacher what this was, and he explained that it was a special language that told computers what to do.
The kids around the tables had all been reading the same gobbledygook in their books, and now they were acting like rapid-typing robots. All this had to mean they were being told what to do in computer language.
I peered over my sunglasses and saw that Ms. Rogue was looking over her laptop at me. She was getting suspicious. I had to find a way to blend in with the weird robot kids.
I pulled a couple of books from the shelf and checked the pages. They all had regular words in them. The librarian was handing out the gobbledygook books herself. Like the one she had offered me….
I strolled back to the counter and smiled sweetly.
“Um, I can’t find anything interesting, so I’d like to read the book about the magic doggie, please,” I said. I hoped Ms. Rogue was keen to add another soldier to her creepy robot army.
The librarian grinned from ear to ear as she passed me the book.
A quick glance inside confirmed that Poochie Power! was another of Ms. Rogue’s gobbledygook books. I took it to a chair tucked away behind a bookshelf. I wasn’t sure how long the brain programming was supposed to take, so I waited five minutes. Then I wandered out again like a robot.
I sat down at one of the empty laptops, stared straight ahead, and began tapping randomly at the keys as fast as I could. Then, keeping my head still, I glanced sideways. A very smug-looking librarian was peeping over the counter.
I’d obviously fooled her. Now I had to figure out exactly what she was up to.
I slipped a hand down to the mouse and clicked around the desktop until I found a folder called “TOP SECRET.” And when I opened the folder, I found a document called “My Fiendish Plan.”
“That’s original!” I mumbled, clicking the file open.
I’ve foiled lots of plans to take over the world before, but this lunatic librarian was planning to take over the World Wide Web! This didn’t tell me what she planned to do if she succeeded, but businesses use the Internet and lots of people have it at home. She’d probably be able to access anything she wanted!
Ms. Rogue suddenly left her counter. She marched toward the reading tables where I was still snooping and everyone else was typing. I quickly got rid of the folder and resumed the random prodding of keys.
“Someone here is typing gobbledygook!” she yelled, banging her fist on the table. The sudden bang made me jump, which was a huge mistake. None of the other kids even reacted to the noise, and Ms. Rogue now knew I was faking.
The librarian lurched forward and made a grab for me, but I managed to duck under the table. I escaped through Trudy Hart’s legs. I jumped up at the other side of the table to find Ms. Rogue tapping at my laptop, deleting what I’d typed. This proved that the robot kids were not just jabbing keys at random. They were turbo-typing the code that would allow Ms. Rogue to take over the Internet!
“You’re not going to get away with this!” I said, waving a finger across the table.
“And who’s going to stop me?” said the librarian, snapping the laptop shut.
“Me!” I said confidently, although I still had no idea how.
As Ms. Rogue chased me around the tables, I pressed DELETE on all of the other kids’ computers, hoping it might undo their programming or something like that.
But it had no effect at all. They just continued to type.
The librarian was gaining on me, so I broke away and charged across the library. I ducked down aisles of books that were a bit narrow for someone as big as my pursuer—which at least slowed her down a bit.
But wherever I went, Ms. Rogue was still behind me. I spotted the storage closet up ahead and sprinted for it.
Luckily, the door wasn’t locked. I managed to barge inside and slam the door shut before she caught me. I bolted the door and peeped through the blind. Ms. Rogue was stomping her massive feet and cursing my escape. Then I became aware of another voice coming from inside the room!
“Mmmf mmf fmm!” it went, which was pretty creepy.
I turned around very slowly to find Ms. Young sitting in the middle of the room! The real librarian was tied to a chair and had a date-stamp sticker stuck over her mouth. I hurried forward and ripped it off quickly like a Band-Aid.
“Amelia!” gasped Ms. Young. “Oh, thank goodness!”
“Are you OK, Ms. Young?” I asked. I quickly began untying the ropes. “I guess you already know a madwoman has taken over the library! What happened?”
“I came in early this morning to unpack the new delivery of books,” she explained. “And as soon as I stepped through the door, a large woman with unfortunate bangs pounced on me and tied me up. Then she stuffed me in here!”
“Did she say anything?” I asked, undoing the last of the knots.
“Well, she did seem very irritated that there were so many books. Which I thought was odd. This is a library, after all,” said Ms. Young, rubbing her wrists. “In fact
, she spent the whole time ranting about how useless books were….”
“Evil geniuses and criminal masterminds do love to rant,” I said, stepping back over to the door.
Through the blind I could see Ms. Rogue had returned to the laptop at the counter and was typing even more furiously than before.
“Evil geniuses and criminal masterminds?” frowned Ms. Young.
“Er, yes …” I said, suddenly realizing I’d said too much.
I couldn’t let the librarian know I was a secret agent because then it wouldn’t be secret anymore. “I mean they always love to rant in the Suzy Spy books.”
“Of course,” said Ms. Young, joining me at the door and looking through the blind. “Perhaps she really is an evil genius or a criminal mastermind! I wonder what she’s doing on that laptop?”
“I’m not sure, but I think she’s trying to take over the Internet,” I said, trying to sound vague and clueless. “She also tampered with the books to make the kids write her computer code….”
“Tampered with my books!” gasped Ms. Young.
I was wondering how I could stop the fake librarian and keep the real librarian safe—all without revealing my secret-agent identity, when Ms. Young suddenly unlocked the door and charged into the library!
I ran after the librarian, who was heading straight for Ms. Rogue!
“Stop what you’re doing and leave my library right now!” demanded Ms. Young.
The fake librarian narrowed her eyes at the real librarian and then laughed. It was a loud booming laugh that I’ve heard many times before. It’s the lunatic laugh of someone who thinks a plan for world domination is unstoppable.
I stood next to Ms. Young and decided to speed things along a bit.
“So what are you trying to do anyway?” I sighed. Evil geniuses and criminal masterminds simply can’t resist bragging about how clever they are. “Aside from taking over the Internet, of course!”
“I plan to rid the world of books!” said Ms. Rogue, flinging her arms in the air dramatically. “And when I’ve closed down every library and bookstore and publisher, I will then be able to control what everyone reads on the Internet!”
Ms. Young gasped. I scratched my head.
“What have you got against books?” I asked. I was stalling while I figured out what to do next.
“They are dusty and outdated, and the people who read them are weak and dull!” growled Ms. Rogue. “We live in an age of the information superhighway! With megabits and gigabits and downloads and upgrades….”
Ms. Rogue lost track of her rant for a moment because she had suddenly lost half her audience. Ms. Young had hurried away and seemed to be hiding behind one of the bookshelves.
“And that’s the perfect example!” sneered Ms. Rogue, pointing to the empty spot where Ms. Young had been standing. “Surrounding herself with all these dusty books has turned her into a timid little mouse who flees at the first sign of….”
Ms. Young suddenly reappeared with a large book. Ms. Rogue looked completely baffled as the librarian approached the counter. I was pretty confused about Ms. Young’s book too.
“This is the complete works of William Shakespeare!” Ms. Young stated proudly. “Probably the greatest writer in the history of the world!” She lifted the open book in preparation for a reading.
Ms. Rogue was about to stifle an exaggerated yawn when Ms. Young suddenly raised the book higher. Then she snapped it shut and brought the massive volume down on the laptop with an almighty
Ms. Rogue’s yawn quickly became a scream as the keys and wires and other broken bits flew out of her laptop and scattered everywhere. Then a puff of black smoke rose from the crushed computer.
Ms. Rogue’s defeated scream was followed by a moment of silence. We heard no key tapping from the kids on the reading tables. They were all frowning, except for Trudy who was glaring. Smashing the computer had definitely broken the spell. Then they turned to the source of the scream with fingers pressed to their lips.
“SHHHHHHHH!” they all hissed together.
Ms. Rogue looked startled for a moment. Then she fixed her sights on Ms. Young. Suddenly the large lunatic vaulted over the counter and chased the librarian into the storage closet. The door slammed shut behind them.
UH OH! I thought, as the sounds of banging and crashing echoed through the library. Moments later, the door opened. Ms. Rogue was tied to the chair with a “PROPERTY OF THE LIBRARY” sticker on her mouth!
“But how …” I gasped. Ms. Young left the room dusting off her hands.
“I read the Suzy Spy books too,” smiled the librarian. “Do you remember what happened in Menace in Milan?”
“It’s one of my favorites,” I said. I remembered how Suzy circled the crook with a rope like a cowboy and tied him to an office chair. This was obviously how the nimble librarian had overpowered Ms. Rogue.
“Speaking of which …” said Ms. Young.
The librarian went behind the counter and pulled out a brand-new copy of Peril in Paris! She handed it to me with a smile. Then she quickly gathered up the gobbledygook books from the tables.
Trudy was about to protest when Ms. Young took her book, but then she decided against it. I think Trudy stopped liking the Suzy Spy books that day.
When the police came to take Ms. Rogue away, they applauded Ms. Young for her extraordinary skill and bravery in defeating the criminal. The librarian laughed and said she felt like a real secret agent!
Then I sat down with my lunch and started reading the latest Suzy Spy book.
I was really looking forward to finding out what trouble she’d found in Paris. Sometimes it’s really nice to let someone else save the world for a change.
#4 Spooky Ballet! (Agent Amelia) Page 3
